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Marketers Who Send Junk Mail Not Welcome, Group Claims"
TAKOMA PARK, Md. -- This Sunday being the anniversary of the National Do Not Call Registry, the Center for a New American Dream is using the occasion to ask Congress to commission another registry that would let citizens opt out of junk mail. "At long last, Americans can eat dinner free from the incessant harangue of telemarketers," said New Dream President Betsy Taylor. "We should also be able to open our mailboxes with similar peace-of-mind. Let's face it -- how many Americans actually want junk mail? Let's set up a companion registry -- call it donotjunk.gov -- to keep junk mailers from wasting resources and invading our homes." It would be easy to adapt the rules of the telemarketer registry to apply to junk mail, Taylor said. As does the phone registry, the junk mail list could: be funded by the ad industry and therefore not place a financial burden on taxpayers exempt charities and political groups, although they would have to honor citizens' requests not to receive further mail allow businesses to mail to customers up to 18 months after making a sale, although they too would have to honor citizen requests to stop. Until such time as a national junk mail opt-out registry is established, Americans seeking to be free of unwanted solicitations in their mailboxes can look to the Center for a New American Dream, Taylor said. Each July, the center calls upon Americans to declare their independence from junk mail.The center's Web site, www.newdream.org, has forms citizens can print, fill out, and send to credit card companies, mailing list sellers, and other marketers. Since removing a name from mailing lists takes 90 days to take effect, Americans who declare "independence" from junk mail in July will sharply reduce the number of unwanted holiday catalogues and mailers they typically receive in the fall, Taylor said.The center estimates that the typical American household is now barraged with an entire tree's worth of unsolicited postal advertising every year -- the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months, Taylor said. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 5.4 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream in 2001."