Be Brave Not Safe

Building on a prior post “Just Say No To Paper” I’m continuing to identify and promote ways to curb the senseless use of paper. In response to an earlier post on this topic the youngest of my 2 brothers let me know what he and his wife do with junk mail they receive.

Upon opening junk mail that includes a postage paid return envelope they stuff it with pizza coupons and send it back to the “marketer.” Nice gesture, especially if the recipient is a pizza lover!

Building on this idea, I now do something similar. I can’t say “we” because my wife thinks I’m a whack-o on this.

After opening useless snail mail and finding a postage paid return envelope I now simply take all the paper they sent me (the original envelope and all the marketing collateral), pack it into their return envelope and send it straight back to them. This is much better than filling up my recycle bin with THEIR paper. This way they can pay for the cost of shipping the junk mail back to them, and for its disposal. In addition, this supports the US Postal Service’s cause by generating additional revenue 🙂

I realize that if there are only 2 of us doing this (my brother and I) it will probably not make a big difference. But, just think what would happen if thousands upon thousands of people did this. I believe that the marketers would “wake up” and “cut down” on the use of paper as it would become an increasingly expensive proposition yielding decreasing results…

Please feel free to leave a comment sharing steps you are taking to curb the senseless use of paper and the killing of trees.