Business Junk Mail Reduction Project

I'm the designated person to try and limit the amount of unwanted mail received at the city facility where I have an office. At this building, there are about 40 office workers and another 60 field workers.

When I started this junk mail reduction effort, as described below, I was typing up the database and mailing postcards every 3 to 4 months. Now it is 6 to 8 months between mailings, and it has become routine enough that others can also easily do it. In addition, the junk mail from the Public Works office at city hall is now sending us their junk mail.

I have three goals when I deal with junk mail received at the office. First: Make the sender pay for my attempt to be removed. Second: Deal with the unwanted mail as cheaply as possible. Third: Deal with the unwanted mail as quickly as possible. To achieve these goals, I follow the flow chart that I describe here.

For easy of writing, I will use the word letters to describe any type of mailed item. When I use other terms such as catalogues, this is a restrictive term that means catalogues only.

• Some but not all mail can be sent back to the original mailer at their expense. Mail that can be returned in this way are: Letters sent First-Class, letters sent First-Class Pre-Sort, letters marked "Return Service Requested," letters marked "Change Service Requested," or periodicals marked "Postmaster Send Change of Address to" (note that this is sometimes hard to find, but is usually found with the publisher information on the next to last page, or in the first few pages of the periodical). For items with these markings, go to section 2 ("Give Them the Finger").
• Some mail may include a toll-free fax number. Look through the letter to find these numbers. Catalogues often have these numbers. For items with a toll-free fax, go to section 3 ("Fax Them Away").
• Some mail may include a postage-paid envelope or postcard. Catalogues often have these items. For this type of mail, go to section 4 ("Fight Mail with Mail").
• For bulk-rate mail without a fax number or postage-paid return mailer, go to section 5 ("Bottom of the Barrel Bulk Mail").

• Your mail carrier should be able to supply you with a box of "Return to Sender" stickers. These are stickers with the hand pointing to the left ("the finger") and check-off boxes to mark for the reason the mail is being returned. There is no charge for these stickers (you are doing the work that the carrier is responsible for).
• Important - Do not open letters that fit in this category.
• Place the sticker next to your address on the letter, or over your address in the case of a plastic window envelope.
• On the sticker, mark the box, "Attempted - Not Known," write in the date, route number (get this from your carrier), and initial. Our carrier says that the initials don't matter and that anyone's initials will work. In the case that the mail was addressed to the business and not a specific person, mark the box "Refused."
• Give the rejected mail to the carrier the next day.

Note: When I started this effort, I gave letters "the finger" by simply writing refused on everything. This got the attention of the letter carrier, because I believe it caused him more work. The letter carrier was the one who brought in the box of "finger" stickers for me to use. Now to complicate the matter, at another city office building, they asked their letter carrier for a box of finger stickers and that letter carrier said he couldn't give them because they were for official use only. Who knows, but if you start refusing all this stuff it should get someone's attention. The other option is to have a rubber stamp made that mimics the Postal Service "finger" sticker.

The term "Give Them the Finger," referring to these stickers, is so common at post offices that it is nearly an official Postal Service term. Any and every postal employee will know what you mean when you say this in reference to letters.

• After finding the toll-free fax number, write "Remove From Mailing List" on the letter next to your address, then fax to the sender. For an investment of approximately $20 you can have a self-inking "Remove From Mailing List" rubber stamp made that will save time.

• After finding the return-postage-guaranteed envelope or postcard, write "Remove From Mailing List" on the letter next to your address, then place in the envelope, or cut out your address and tape it to the postcard. You can also use a rubber stamp (see section 3).

• For this type of mail, I remove and save the page with the sender and addressee addresses and recycle the remaining paper. You will find that junk mail offenders tend to offend in groups (sending the same unwanted mail to several people in an office), and you can sort the unwanted mail and staple the duplicates together.
• After I have a good stack of unwanted mail, I type the sender's addresses into a database. A caution - keep the addresses in order so you can match the database with the original information.
• Once I have a database, I generate postcards that can be mailed for 20 cents, versus 33 cents for a letter. The postcards state, "Please remove this/these addresses from your mailing list." If you would like details on the system that I use to generate these postcards - and copies of the Microsoft Word files that I use for this - please e-mail me at the address below.
• Next I go through and cut out the addressee's address and tape it to the postcard. Add postage and mail. 

Source: Paul Dunn, City of Omaha Public Works Department. Phone: (402) 444-3908. E-mail: Pdunn@ci.omaha.ne.us

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