Findings

Let's stomp out junk mail!

Yet, if this problem suddenly went away, what would be the economic impact? 550 and 370 million spent to send and dispose of annually (respectively), that, apparently (according to this picture, need to check sources) is 550 million a year that the post office , already struggeling, would not get, (and it would'nt lower costs by nearly that much because of unions and over head on loans for equipment and what not), and 370 million that local landfills and city garbage collectors would lose out on, though again costs wouldn't be lowered much (though more due to privatized garbage businesses). Its nice to look at this and say, lets get rid of junk mail some how.. but the ecconomic impact of a sudden loss would be pretty rough on a lot of areas. The transition needs to be slow.

This also doesnt take into account the amounts spent to print and create these peices, which is much more than the shipping and disposal fees, nor the costs (in employee time) to process them, again a very high number I would imagine. How many jobs are supported by Junk mail? That would be an interesting one to look at too... The Paper making, logging, printing, creative design, processing, not to mention the money that must be being made on this type of marketing, (or they wouldn't still do it). How many jobs can be accounted for by this?

There are two sides to every coin.