Junk Mail Gets Stamp of Disapproval

Each year, the average Los Angeles household receives 170 pounds of junk mail--and 68 pounds of it is never opened.

Most of the mail is eventually tossed into a vast collective stream of garbage leading to city landfills, where it ranks second only to lawn trimmings as a space eater.

Worse, unlike glass bottles or newspapers, most junk mail can’t be recycled because there is not yet a market for their little cellophane windows.

Standing beside mailbags crammed with a year’s supply of the stuff, Mayor Tom Bradley held a news conference on City Hall steps Friday to kick off Los Angeles’ official campaign to stop the deluge of what he called “unwanted mail.”

Aiming to curtail the problem at its source, Bradley encouraged residents to send special pre-addressed “stop junk mail” postcards to the mail preference service of the Direct Mail Marketing Assn. of New York requesting that their names be removed from direct mailing lists.

Although the 3,500-member association, a clearing house that obtains mailing lists and rents them to national marketers, accommodates such requests, a spokesman for the group called Bradley’s plan a misdirected and unwelcome “attempt to censor the citizens of Los Angeles’ mailboxes.”

“For a mayor to categorically censor direct mail . . . is ludicrous,” association spokesman Chet Dalzell said. “The value of direct mail is especially important to lawmakers, who understand the power it has on consumers.”

Anticipating being asked whether he considers political literature to be junk mail, Bradley said “political mail is not included.”

“You’re stuck and will continue to get political mail,” Bradley said with a laugh. “No, we wouldn’t dare go that far.”

Residents can obtain the postcards by calling 1-800-CITY-SAN, or by picking them up at the city’s new recycling information booth, which is touring local neighborhoods, said Felicia Marcus, president of the city’s Board of Public Works.

The cards read, in part: “Los Angeles is currently in the midst of a garbage crisis. Our only city-owned landfill is nearing capacity and most Los Angeles-area landfills reach their daily tonnage limits and must close by noon. . . . Therefore, I am requesting that you remove my name from all mailing lists.”

“It takes about three months to start seeing results,” Marcus said. “Residents can expect to cut their junk mail by 75%.”

Meanwhile, the city is rapidly running out of space in landfills to handle the endless stream of catalogues, magazine subscription offers, credit card solicitations and political hit pieces.

Each year, 53,000 tons of junk mail land in the city, and every ton of that disposed paper takes up 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, city officials said.

Nationwide, catalogues produced in 1990 caused the destruction of more than 74,000 acres of forest.

“The thing that will solve this problem is consumers raising their voices,” Marcus said. “If they say they don’t want junk mail, they won’t get it. The generators of this stuff just have to believe they mean it.”

But Dalzell suggested that the direct mail industry is good for the environment because “people who stay at home and shop are participating in what we believe to be the greatest car pool on earth.”

Beyond that, “The record 98.6 million Americans who made a purchase from their home by mail or by phone in response to mail pieces last year do not consider direct mail junk,” Dalzell said. “Nor do perhaps hundreds of Los Angeles businesses who use direct mail to reach consumers consider it junk either.”