A junk mail registry? Opposition holds the cards

Catalogs. Credit card offers. Coupon packets. Candidate fliers.

No matter the shape, size or message, they arrive incessantly, adding up by pounds and tons.

The U.S. Postal Service and marketers, who pay billions of dollars to get the messages to you, call it advertising mail. Most recipients call it junk mail – and it’s growing every year.

“This is a symbol of unnecessary waste,” said Todd Eklof, pastor of Clifton Unitarian Church, who recently carted 50 pounds of the stuff – a year’s worth – to a Louisville, Ky., postal branch as a protest. “Nobody likes junk mail. In many ways, it seems to be an invasion of our privacy.”

The Center for the New American Dream, a Maryland-based group that is leading the charge against the mailings, says 100 million trees are cut down each year to make the paper for junk mail – and much of that ends up in landfills.

“There is a growing movement among legislators” to pass laws controlling junk mail, said Kentucky state Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, who has pledged to introduce a junk-mail registry bill – similar to the “no-call” lists for telemarketers – next year.

No state has enacted such a law, but the legislation is being considered in Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington state. Bulk-mail proponents point out that similar bills have been withdrawn in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri and Montana.

The Direct Marketing Association, a trade group for bulk mailers, argues that “many people don’t think of it as junk,” said Stephanie Hendricks, spokeswoman for the group.

The association also has a powerful ally – the Postal Service.

While the agency is not allowed to lobby state legislators, it writes letters to lawmakers explaining the importance of what it calls “standard” mail when bills to control it are introduced, said its spokeswoman, Joanne Veto.

The Postal Service says such advertising and other bulk mail is important to the national economy – even as Veto acknowledges that “it can be annoying.”

The direct-mail advertising industry employs more than 3 million Americans, contributing $400 billion to the economy and about $20 billion to the Postal Service – about 30 percent of its income. In 2006, the USPS moved more than 102 billion pieces of advertising and bulk mail, 11.6 billion pounds in all, compared with 97.6 billion pieces of first-class mail weighing 4.4 billion pounds.

Rick Haskins, an administrator for Hanover College in Indiana, said that several years ago, when he and his wife lived in Florida, they collected their junk mail for a year. The result was a stack of mail-order catalogs 7 feet tall, he said.

“We got catalogs for ski equipment, Army equipment and horse tack – things we had no interest in at all,” he said. “Imagine the paper, the energy to produce, the energy to deliver, and the energy to haul away that could be saved if we all had the ability to say, ‘No more.’ “

Hans Gesund, a University of Kentucky professor, said he’s not bothered by such mail.

“There is inevitable waste involved, but on the other hand it keeps the Postal Service in business and our letter carrier employed,” he said. “Do away with junk mail, and lots of people will lose their jobs on both the sending and the receiving ends.”

Veto, the Postal Service spokeswoman, said agency officials are working with the advertising industry to help it better target customers, such as making sure catalog retailers keep their customer lists current.

And Hendricks said her organization allows people to request they not be added its 4,000 members’ marketing lists.

She noted that state legislation to establish junk-mail registries threatens big catalog companies and small businesses alike, as well as churches and nonprofit groups.

If the junk-mail registry idea spreads, even some environmental groups that promote forest conservation could, ironically, be pinched because many rely on mail for money and other appeals.

For example, the Sierra Club, which has a policy of fighting commercial logging in national forests, uses bulk mailings to solicit new members, raise money and make voting recommendations – sometimes annoying its own members.

Sierra Club spokesman David Willett acknowledged that “there’s an environmental impact for large-volume mail,” but said, “We take steps to minimize that, like using recycled paper.”