Sustainable Snail Mail

The postal service is amazing for all the wonderful things it brings us, but what happens to all that extra paper? In this challenge we will apply the Zero Waste Hierarchy Model from “Zero Waste Europe” to snail mail. We challenge you to follow these steps over the next month to achieve Sustainable Snail Mail.

REFUSE / RETHINK / REDESIGN

Move all of your bills to electronic statements with email notifications.

Collect all of your junk mail for a month and then go through each individual piece of mail to figure out how to unsubscribe from snail mail. If you do this and find more information than what is offered below, please write what you discovered in the comments so we can all benefit!

Take the time to cancel any subscriptions that you’re no longer interested in, or opt for the digital version of the publication.

In your Amazon account you can opt for no plastic packaging for all future orders. To do this, log in to your account, go to help > contact us > more help/chat. It may take a few minutes to complete this process.

Opt out of Insurance and Credit Card Offers: OptOutPreScreen.com (or call 888-567-8688). (You do not have to enter your ssn to complete this process).

Remove your address from Valpak https://www.valpak.com by clicking on “Address Removal” at the bottom of the page.

Unsubscribe from Retail Me Not https://www.retailmenot.com/everyday/unsubscribe

To unsubscribe from political mail, you will need to send in a note that politely says you no longer wish to receive their publications.

You may be able to use the app PaperKarma https://www.paperkarma.com to take pictures of junk mail and then they try to stop the junk mail for you.

REUSE

Save your snail mail paper in a bin for fire starter.

Make your own paper with your mail scraps. For instructions on how to make your own paper please check out my youtube videos on how to make a deckle: [ insert link ] and how to make your own paper: [ insert link]

RECYCLE / COMPOST