GreenDimes - Stopping Junk Mail
Yesterday, I checked my mail box at the apartment building and found a large stack of credit card applications. There were a couple from Capitol One, some Discover Cards, and some other random promos, some involving air miles. Blah, blah, blah. I also got a promotional puzzle from Veer, which was pretty cool, but still waste.
I had a thought: I’m going to rip all of these up when I get inside and just toss them. Why couldn’t they just email me all this crap, right into my junk mail folder, where a nice little email service would delete it after 10 days. I took that thought a little further and began to think about all the paper that would be saved if all those marketers quit sending me all that junk.
Happily enough, today I found out about a program called GreenDimes. They take your name and address and for 10 cents a day (or $36.00/year), they will contact a bunch of direct marketers and make sure your name is taken off the list and stays off the list. They’ll make the effort for you. And on top of it, they’ll plant a tree in your name every month, which works to regrow tree populations that are decimated by our paper consumption. Brilliant.
I think if you’re interested, you should probably check it out. I know we all get a lot of junk mail and it’s probably pretty frustrating to just toss out all that paper, when we all know how much we waste every day. So, check it out - www.greendimes.com.
The Lord of the Rings (Movie Art Cover)
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition (Harperresource Book)
The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
A Wrinkle in Time
Great Emergence, The: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier
this sounds really great. how did you hear about this?
I found a link from (the band) Mae’s website. A serendipitous discovery!
Hey- thanks for posting about GreenDimes! We really appreciate your taking the time to tell others about our service. Make sure to check the site from time to time and see what we are working on to help make the world a better place. Thanks again for the mention,
-Kendra
http://www.greendimes.com
I hate marketers, they’re all liars! I can’t beleive are universities still have marketing departments. Who would ever want to major in marketing or go into that field of work. Those people would be crazy to think they could make a difference. If we just focused on commoditized cosumption, then marketing would just go away. Think how great all our lives could be!
Seriously Zach, maybe those people should devote themselves to more worthy pursuits, like sales or something. From a former marketer to a future marketer, there’s nothing wrong with being excited about your product and sharing that with others. My thing is this: please stop wasting paper doing it. Send me junk email. I’ll delete the crap and maybe buy something from iTunes or Amazon because they have done their homework and sent me something specialized. What do you think about that?
Seth, totally agree. With today’s consumer it’s about permission marketing. There’s no permission in junk mail, it just ads to the unacceptable level of wastage and clutter. Even if you have a positive ROI for a direct mail campaign, that doesn’t mean you should do it. Businesses will need to keep thinking about externalities because consumers definetly are. With GreenDimes, you get the best of both world’s. For most people, $36 a year will outway the hassel of dealing with junk mail and at the same time, preserving the environment has a value. Seth, I think that next time you should name some of your junk mail specifically. I’ll go first: “Capital One, stop sending me crap. If I want a credit card I will seek it out on my own. I congratulate you in getting my attention, but oh wait, it was done so irresponsibly and I now have a negative association with your company. The next time I’m interested in a credit card, I will most certainly not be choosing one of your’s.” Sorry about the rant but someone had to say it.
What’s funny to me is not even the credit companies but the environmental agencies that send me junk mail. Namely WashPIRG (the folks in blue jackets on the street corners), to whom I pledged for a couple months before mustering up the courage to call and cancel my donations. Not once in my time as a subscribed donor did I receieve a wasteful paper mailing, but now that I am gone I get at least one per week. How ironic, don’t you think? We can assume that credit card companies either don’t know better or don’t give a damn. But Environmental NGO’s should know better if they do in fact give a damn. Just a thought.