environment { 41pounds.org

After reading EB's post about 'When Fox Attacks, Fight Back,' I followed the link to check out the site foxattacks.com (which I think is an awesome idea). While reading through I found a link to this site: 41Lbs. Its an organization that when you subscribe, it does the leg work for you to reduce your junkmail by 85-90% (and donate $15 to a charity in your name). That's a lot of paper saved. Since moving to Rochester, we don't receive nearly the junkmail we used to in St. Paul, but we still receive a lot. I've signed up for that take me off the list thing the Direct Marketing Association offers, but its only been marginally effective (and a pain in the ass). I'm thinking of signing Nerdwife and I up for this and see what happens.

The only problem I see, is in this age of mega-mergers and mega-corps, your information is sold and spread far and wide. And any company you've done business with (which many view as just looking at them) lets them get around the DMA mailing block. They of course share this info with their business partners, and thus claim prior business and eventually your junkmail is back up. Case in point, my credit card. Over the last 12 years I've had a credit card, I've had at least eight different credit card companies. In only one case, did I choose to switch myself (when I switched from my Wachovia, now Chase card to Working Assets, who had MBNA now Bank of America). Over this journey, three of these changes resulted in my ending up with Bank of America, who ties Chase for most bothersome with mailing and phone offers (though Capital One is gaining on them fast).

Seriously we need to move to an automatic opt-out system (perhaps like the European Union has), if not for the usual reasons, here's another one, the environment.