Junk Mail, a modern phenomenon and the bane of my existance.
By recycledgoth
@recycledgoth (9894)
April 26, 2007 3:05am CST
I heard the letter box this morning and went running down stairs to see if there was any post for me. Cards, letters, bills, you know the sort of thing. One the doormat was a heap of mail, loads of envelopes both white and brown, lots of cards etc. I grabbed up all the ost thinking *oh wow, lots of letters* then took a closer look.
Out of a total of 19 items in the mail, only 2 were actually genuine items in the post, the rest was junk mail. Offers of cheap double glazing, reducing my monthly bills, new garage doors, get my car insurance reduced, etc. All this junk mail, about half a rain forest's worth of trees, dumped straight into the recycling bag by the door. So I rather disconsolantly mooched back upstairs and logged onto my computer, to find ................ junk mail in my inbox. *bangs head onto desk* Loads of spam and junk emails, offering to enhance my manhood, supply medication, click this link to wealth, etc. I spent a good 15 minutes just going through all this rubbish deleting and reporting spam.
I think I need to go lie down in a quiet room now, just to calm down, I can't stand junk mail, whether it be through the door or through the interenet. What do you guys think, do you like receiving all these wonderful offers? How do you feel when you see the postman with all the junkmail?
7 people like this
14 responses
@Tetchie (2932)
• Australia
26 Apr 07
I have a No Junk Mail sign on my mail box and never receive any. It's wonderful because I don't feel guilty about another tree being destroyed. I don't get a full recycle bin because I have less paper. I never read it anyway. Junk mail here is treated the same as spam on your computer, you have to give the mailman permission to put it in your mail box.
If you don't have the means to have no junk mail, do something about it. Lobby friends and approach the powers that be to stop it. Return all junk mail to the post office and tell them you didn't request it, or you are not a personal friend of the mailer.
Make a noise about it. It's an environmental hazard and because of the climate change political agendas it should be easy to make changes.
1 person likes this
@recycledgoth (9894)
•
26 Apr 07
I have a little sign by the letterbox with No Junk Mail on it but it doesn't stop it being posted through :-(
I was thinking of using all their reply envelopes to send back torn up junk mail :-)
@mummymo (23706)
•
26 Apr 07
It makes my blood boil! They go on about the environment but then insist on using reams of paper for no good reason - we don't want their junk in the first place! Worst of all is the politicians - they should really know better! Here in Scotland it is the local elections next week and every single political party you can imagine are putting wads and wads of papers through the door telling us how wonderful they are and how they are going to help make everything better - including the damage to the environment - event though they are using up so much paper needlessly! My 13 yr old son is more interested in helping environmental issues than these so called representatives of the public are! Oooops sorry - gone off on a bit of a rant there! I don't like junk mail either! lol xx
1 person likes this
@recycledgoth (9894)
•
26 Apr 07
Welcome to my rant hun, we have our local elections in Birmingham next week too, and all the junk mail election stuff is going on about recycling and the environment. Ruddy hypocrites !!!
1 person likes this
@mummymo (23706)
•
26 Apr 07
Thanks sweety - I think the majority of them are hypocrites and publicity hungry! They go in with good intentions (some of them) and end up caught in the vicius cycle of wanting to get more and more out of the system for themselves rather than us! Thank you for letting me rant with you grannygoth(!) I seem to be ranting a lot the last few days which isn't like me but boy does it relieve stress! lol xxx
1 person likes this
@rx4life (1930)
• United States
26 Apr 07
I am a junk mail hater...and I need a 12 step program to get me through this awful thing in my life!!! Last week alone I got 16 pounds (US) of catalogs!!!! My recycling bin is already full and it's not been a week!!!! I put my name on all the remove lists and they say it will take 90 days to be effective...but yikes...each day we lug in all the mail and inevitably there are maybe 2 things out of 20 that are for us...it's depressing...and all the credit card companies that send the checks to be cashed with our account numbers on them...I dislike that immensely...I then have to shred at least 2 pages of each of those offers...When I call the banks they tell me it's because we have such good credit and everyone wants us to use their cards or put a balance on a card we have but aren't using "enough"...so I guess I should have bad credit and get less junk mail...Anyone know the address to the 12 step Junk mail haters program?
1 person likes this
@recycledgoth (9894)
•
26 Apr 07
Oh yes, the wonderful cheques from the credit card companies, and the catelogues, I forgot about those or at least was trying to forget about them. I have a large bag by my front door, specifically for the junk mail that arrives on a daily basis. :-(
@arkaf61 (10881)
• Canada
27 Apr 07
I hate it too!!! Big time!
I"m very careful now about giving out my address and phone number no matter where, I'm tired of discovering more and more places and companies selling names and addresses as well as everything else.
I have a friend that sends back some of her junk mail, she uses the envelopes provided on those credit card offers and fills them up with other junk mail she receives , then mails them.
The strange part is that there is people that actually like to receive all that.
I guess it should only be sent to people that are interested a lot of time, money and trees could be saved if something like this was done.
1 person likes this
@wonderful1 (2075)
• China
27 Apr 07
everyday there is almost 50 junk mails in my inbox.i feel very boring and angry,but i dont how to cancel the junk mails.if i refuse the email address,i will miss the important letters from there.It is a hard and boring work to delete the junk mails.
1 person likes this
@ElusiveButterfly (45940)
• United States
26 Apr 07
My husband just tosses them in the trash bin. If they can be burned they go into the wood box. I am tired of getting so much of it.
Email junk is getting on my nerves too. It takes forever to weed through the junk. All I want to do is read my email from friends or other things I have subscribed to.
@feralwoman (2199)
• Australia
26 Apr 07
That's one thing I miss about not living in the UK, we don't have letterboxes on our doors here in Oz. Letterboxes are away from the house and near the "nature strip" by the footpath near the road, so the postie can deliver easily and not go into anyone's property. When I go and collect the mail I'm amazed at the amount of junk there is and it goes straight into the recycling bin! Fortunately I don't get a lot of junk mail in my inbox and if I do it's straight into the junk mail file and deleted! LOL
1 person likes this
@Trace86 (5030)
• United States
26 Apr 07
I would much rather get junk mail that I can toss in the bin than bills that require me to find money somewhere to pay. It seems like everyone wants my money.
At least junk mail can be interesting for a minute or two and not cost me a cent.
1 person likes this
@gemini1960 (1161)
• Philippines
27 Apr 07
I dont receive any on mail or by post, but on e-mails yes, they are so many i hate to open my mail.
@perrygunight (555)
• United States
26 Apr 07
My favorite junk mail is the kind that is addressed to "Resident" and says, "Congratulations! You are a winner!" If that doesn't make you feel special, what will?
When I started getting loads of junk mail with the same incorrect spelling of my name, I tried to stop it by writing, "Return to Sender" on each piece and throwing them into the mailbox at the post office. I spoke to the mailman about it and he said that kind of stuff doesn't get returned to sender if it was sent bulk, which it all was. It just gets tossed in the trash. So instead of getting a message to the senders to stop, I was making more work for the people at the post office. Now I just throw it all into the recycling bin with the rest of it.
1 person likes this
@princeworthy (1909)
• United States
26 Apr 07
I hate getting junk mail too! Today I didn't get anything good in the mail. Yesterday I got a sample go Kashi ceral but today nothing but junk! Yahoo does a pretty good job of keeping the junk out of my email box I only had one spam to report today. I usually use a seperate email for thing I think will send me junk and then only check it once a week. This might help you to do.
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
27 Apr 07
oh i hate it.most of my mail is leaflets,and to make it worse,sometimes real mail slips between the inserts and gets thrown away if it isn't seen.i wish there was a "no call list" version of mail.
mom gets a lot of realtor offers to buy her house too which i think is the utmost in rude.i chew them out every chance i get because they upset her.
@northernnorway (25)
• Norway
26 Apr 07
Here in Norway you can add a sticker to your mail box that says you don't want any spam mail and the postman has to obey. You don't have anything like that in the UK?
What kind of e-mail are you using? I hardly get any spam e-mails at all with gmail and I have my address public on my 2 blogs. Maybe I'm just lucky or gmail's spam protection is really good.
Great to hear that you care about recycling.
The world needs more caring people :)
