Anti-Junkmail Experiment

Well, it was worth a try. I had some post-cards printed up that said "please remove me from your mailing list." The cards included a list of possible reasons for my wanting to receive junkmail, from which I could circle what I wanted to tell the company, including "you spent my donation on requests for more donations" and "your mailings are a waste of paper and other resources."

That's a card to White Flower Farm on top: a particularly over-priced mail-order plant company that spreads invasives and sold me some under-performing saffron crocus bulbs. Along with various other unwanted catalog-senders, this batch of mailings also included some environmental organizations that I really, deeply want to support, but who have irritated me away with wasteful mailings and free gifties that I don't want, and don't want to put in a landfill.

On each card, I cut out and pasted the address of the company or organization on the right, as well as my own address on the left, so that the company would know who to cross off of their list.

My expectation was that these cards would be received and largely ignored. What I didn't expect was to find them returned in my own mailbox.

I like to think highly of our postal service, but it seems that either they have forgotten where on a postcard the mail-to address traditionally goes, or they are permitting companies to print return addresses on their mailings that are actually unsuitable to go through the mail.

Perhaps after the Christmas hullaballo dies down, I will go to the post office and ask.