Here I am again, staring at another brochure of an appliance manufacturer, advertising things I don’t need, using colorful thick papers that are hard to tear, just because I bought something from them almost twenty years ago. I didn’t sign up for anything except to register for the warranty, and they appear in my email inbox and home address. Almost two decades.
I used to like National Geographic magazine. It has a lot of interesting articles and beautiful natural pictures. In fact, I liked it so much that I subscribed to their magazine one time. And having them in my inbox was great; it was something other than bills. Anyway, I didn’t renew the subscription after a year because I had to cut much of my spending. But almost every few months after that, for over ten years, they keep sending a stack of brochures, including subscription forms. Some were wrapped in clear plastics, some in postcards, and most were paper brochures. Every time, there were at least a couple of item combinations. A stack is not an exaggeration. I wrote to them and re-confirmed my intention that I would not re-subscribe and to stop sending me those, but nothing worked. It still arrived in my mailbox for more than a decade. I wouldn’t say that I am doing as much as I wish to help the environment, but trying to reduce and recycle are some little efforts I try to maintain. So one day, on top of my ongoing annoyance, I snapped when these junks came together with the advertisement of their new edition about reducing waste and plastic, saving our planet stuff. I hadn’t been active on my social media for a long time, but I logged into my personal Facebook and posted a rant about it on their wall. I believe the post was deleted, I don’t know if they had ways to track me, but I haven’t had anything from them in my mail.
But they are simply too many to devote the time to eliminate them. The efforts hardly worked the first few times, and the junks reappeared. I have tried to mail back those unsolicited insurance registrations; they come in many pages, forms, ads, plans, and most people throw them in the trash. We live in a public apartment building, and the letterboxes are easily accessible for anyone to put their junk mail in. Some have proper names and specific addresses, just like the one I hold that still haunts me after two decades. So what we should do with these forms is to fill them, sign them, and mail them back, and they’ll get a new customer, and I’ll have another insurance in case I’ll need hospitalization recovery after I sell my kidney to pay for the premium. As goodwill, they always send you an envelope with a return stamp. And when I am able to, I send them back the empty forms, with everything else that comes in the envelope. Junk in a full circle. I wonder if they work.
Because of Covid, I hadn’t been coming back here (I stay in two places) for almost four years. So last year, when I was back, there was a lot of housekeeping to do, updating my expired bank card, activating online banking, and resetting my account preference. I am talking about a single basic ATM card that one can’t function without nowadays. Nothing fancy, and I have almost nothing inside. The day after, I received eight crisp envelopes in my mailbox. It was scary. Who is looking for me in these proper-formal-written white envelopes? You know where I am going. One letter is a notification about me changing my password, and then about the password change confirmation, notification, and confirmation about my new card, internet banking, account setting, and the list of awesome readers’ reviews for my books. Wait, unfortunately, not the last one. To add to the landfill, they include promotions for the bank products in at least half of those. All are identical.
Some companies have options to opt out of paper notifications, but some are still hanging onto it. To be honest, I prefer monthly paper notifications for my transactions so that I can check on them, but nothing beyond that.
At least, compared to ten years ago, the apartments no longer have a built-in trash pool below the letter boxes. The trash pool was a square concrete box as wide as the collective letter slots, knee high, where residents could just swipe the unwanted real estate and advertisement brochures into them. Keep them neat? Not at all, the mailboxes were packed with them every day, and this concrete paper pool would be filled to the brim, and those pesky papers would fly away.
So now I am writing the return address of this brochure, foaming in my mouth, knowing that doing this might result in nothing and, ironically, most likely as destructive as what they are doing.
I’m not sure if this is the cost of living in modern society. I don’t remember getting more than a few small-sized advertisements in a more laidback place for over a decade, and everything is useful about some plumbing, technician, and other business that I happily keep in case I need them. Do you have this kind of problem too where you are?
I don’t know much about advertisements, but imho, these papers deserve to end up somewhere other than the trash pool. Books!
