Get rid of junk mail while helping the environment

If it seems like you get more junk mail than anything else, it’s because it’s likely that you do. The average person receives 41 pounds of junk mail each year.

Marketing mail - packages of coupons, postcards, and flyers - makes up more than half of the mail sent each year, according to  the U.S. Postal Service.

That mail is more than just annoying. It hurts our environment. Producing a year's worth of junk mail takes 80 million to 100 million trees. Then, 5.6 million tons of junk mail ends up in landfills each year. 

Recycle junk mail, see only your important mail

At Earth Class Mail, we strive to keep junk mail out of our customers’ lives and out of landfills. That’s why we recycle junk mail automatically. Our operations team filters out the junk mail, but still scans the bulk mail our customers might want, such as subscription-based magazines. This way, only the mail you need to see appears in your account.

Once you review your mail, you decide whether you want to have the mail forwarded to you, stored, or shredded. The majority of mail we receive ends up shredded and then recycled. 

Your recycled mail later becomes recycled products sold at major U.S. retailers, such as Costco. 

Mail recycling at Earth Class Mail

We fill up more than 30 containers each week that get picked up by our recycling partner. It adds up to over 6 tons of paper recycled each week. 

We partner with an independent recycling operator to make sure everything we say is recycled actually will be. That’s not always true when you recycle junk mail at home. Two-thirds of items people intended to recycle ended up contaminated and then in landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. When we recycle junk mail, we make sure it doesn’t get contaminated and work with an independent recycling operator to oversee the process. 

How we help you make mail eco-friendly

Earth Class Mail has always recycled, but we weren’t sure if our customers realized how much of an impact they were making. 

That’s why on Earth Day 2021, we decided to celebrate their efforts. We partnered with the National Forest Foundation to plant a tree for each of our customers. The trees are our way of saying ‘thank you’ for recycling junk mail and their other mail.  We’ve also committed to donating a tree each time a new customer signs up for the rest of the year. 

As a business, we’re reducing our carbon footprint when we recycle junk mail, but we wanted to do more. We set a goal to become carbon neutral by the end of 2022.

Green business benefits when you recycle junk mail 

Virtual mailboxes can help your company become an eco-friendly business. Green businesses can cut down on paper waste, with digitized mail that eliminates the need to make copies of important documents. It can also increase efficiency. Mailroom employees spend about 25 percent of their time sorting through junk mail. 

Stop junk mail before it's sent

Want to do more? You can stop junk mail before it's even mailed by taking your address off mailing lists. Sign up to opt out of pre-screened offers from credit cards and insurance agencies. That cuts down on some of the junk mail so it’s never even sent to you.

 Ready to make your mail green and get rid of junk mail? Learn how it works.