Effort to Stop Junk Mail Thwarted by USPS

TELLURIDE – A grassroots effort to help community members take charge of the amount of junk mail they receive was briefly thwarted on Tuesday when the United States Postal Service forced organizers enrolling people in a catalog reduction service to leave its premises.

“It goes against the interests of the post office to support a campaign like this because it makes a lot of money off of junk mail,” said Eliza Keating of The New Community Coalition from her post at a sign-up table located across the street from the post office.

Throughout the past week TNCC, in partnership with Sheep Mountain Alliance and the Town of Telluride Ecology Commission, have been assisting people sign up for Catalog Choice, a free, web-based service that helps postal patrons reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalogs they receive. The groups have also provided information on how to remove oneself from other direct mail lists.

Although the organizations received permission to locate their table inside the post office from Postmaster Becky Schowalter prior to the event, on Tuesday morning Schowalter informed them that they had to leave, after which they moved.

According to USPS policy, permission was not Schowalter’s to give.

“Becky was trying to be helpful, but one rule that we have is that we can’t allow any type of solicitation or petitioning in our lobbies,” said Denver-based USPS spokesperson Al Desarro.

“She thought it was more to promote recycling, not the ‘j-mail’ issue,” Desarro continued, explaining that junk mail is “not just [the USPS’s] livelihood, but the livelihood of many businesses.”

“It’s sad, nobody wants junk mail,” Keating said.

But Desarro disagreed.

“Many people like getting coupons in the mail and they like hearing about the sales going on,” he said.

Junk mail gets a bad rap, according to Desarro, who explained that not only is direct mail the lifeblood of the USPS, which receives no government subsidies to operate, but that it is directly responsible for millions of jobs.

Almost 460,000 people were directly employed in direct mail marketing in 2007 and an additional 3.1 million U.S. jobs, in industries such as paper manufacturing and printing as well as those held by warehouse and postal workers, were made possible by direct mail marketing according to statistics from the Direct Marketing Association.

USPS headquarters in Denver learned of Telluride’s junk mail reduction through its regular Internet egosurfing, Desarro confirmed.

“When you do that, stories, especially like this, will pop up,” he said.

SMA’s David Allen said that Schowalter was strongly reprimanded for allowing the drive to take place on Postal Service premises.

“Becky was certainly counseled by her manager about it.” Desarro confirmed.

Allen said that the groups asked to locate their sign-up table inside the post office because they believed their effort would reach more people that way.

“We thought we could capture more people inside than out, and it has slowed down,” he said, estimating that sign-ups had dropped by a third.

“I feel really bad about it because Becky had been very cooperative,” said Allen, who praised the Telluride branch for supporting efforts made by local environmental groups such as purchasing additional recycling bins to handle overflow.

“I do personally feel that the United States Postal Service is antiquated in many cases, and this is one of them. The post office is making money off of paper waste,” said Allen.