— by Lin McNulty —
Local Post Office patrons received a notification in their mailboxes on November 20 informing that the recycle contract had been cancelled, that Seattle is no longer accepting any recycle mail.
With that said, the notice continued, “You need to take all mail home.”
Pete Moe, Orcas Recycling Services, met with Postmaster Connie Luerkens on Friday to determine how ORS might be able to help with this dilemma. “I was thinking,” said Moe, “that I could stop by there in my pickup truck once a week and take the junk mail to ORS recycling.”
It’s not that easy. There is a lot of unwanted, recyclable mail that gets left behind at the Post Office. If you have seen those large tubs that are rolled around behind the scenes at the Post Office, they have been filling one of those each and every day for recycle. “That’s about 12 cubic feet per day,” explains Moe. “I can’t just stop by and pick that up.” If you do the math, that’s more than 300 cubic feet per month of unwanted, and usually unnecessary, paper being brought to our island just so it can be taken off again—and that’s only the PO Box customers.
Moe is still pursuing ways in which ORS can help, and he is still talking with Luerkens. Both are hopeful this can be resolved efficiently and quickly.
In the meantime, to slow down or stop the amount of junk mail you receive, visit the Direct Mail Association online to opt-out. Note there are several choices from which you can opt out: (1) Catalogs, (2) Magazines, (3) Other Mail Offers, and (4) Credit Offers. This opt-out program, however, is not a quick process. “Remember,” website states, “to please allow 30-90 days from the time you submit your choices for them to take full effect.”
Postmaster Connie Luerkens could not be reached for comment.
How about using Pete’s idea to raise funds, possibly for the new recycling center? Charge 10 cents an item, on the honor system, and have a box outside the post office that pete coupld pick up at stated intervals along with the cash box? I bet many of us would use the box happily! We’ve all gotten so used to leaving junk mail there, it would be easy to continue the practice.
Maybe Pete or somebody could recruit an additional volunteer for the pickups?
Is it just me or does anyone else find humor in getting junk mail telling us we no longer have a place to recycle junk mail. I would have been fine with a note on the door. Thanks Pete for trying to step up on your own to do this for all of are convienence.
You can also tear off the address on every catalog you receive take it home and call them direct and request being taken off the list. Again not fast or immediate but it does work.
If everybody stopped their receipt of junk mail, including catalogs, the Post Office would be more bankrupt than it is already and probably disappear. The preparation and mailing of catalogs and junk mail to huge lists of purchased addresses is a major industry in the America. We actually created the problem when we moved the “privy” indoors. That refinement in our lifestyle wiped out the useful purpose to which the catalog had been relegated.
I send junk mail back to sender, thus costing them , with a message that I did not request it, and to take me off their list…sometimes, it works…
There outa be a law.
More than a year ago, I signed up with Catalogue Choice and it has worked very well to eliminate unwanted mail. http://www.cataloguechoice.org.
Is it just me or does 12 cubic feet a day just from the Eastsound Post Office sound like a lot? I have a hard time believing they really get that much. Why couldn’t Postmaster Connie Luerkens be reached for comment? How ironic that my first 2 pieces of junk mail were both from the postal service. From now on I will leave it behind if it comes from them.