GreenDimes

One of my many e-newsletter subscriptions recently turned me on to an interesting fledgling company called GreenDimes. Their mission is pretty simple: to positively impact the environment by eliminating junk mail. It makes sense: junk mail wastes paper - which of course uses trees and water by the tanker-full to produce - and the fossil fuels used to transport it. For a dime a day, GreenDimes does all the leg work to unsubscribing your household from the many, many mailing lists that our names get tagged onto when we donate to charity or order something through the mail or however our names get on any given list. Because names are constantly sold and resold, it's the kind of hounding most of us don't have the time or patience for.

Because GreenDimes is as much an environmental initiative as it is a business, membership also includes a tree planted for each month of membership - consider it a few rainbow sprinkles topping off the sundae.

I have to admit that when I signed up a little over a month ago, I was skeptical but decided my $36 was worth the test. As they warn, it takes time to get through to all the snail-mail spammers, some of whom print labels as far as a year in advance. Despite that, we've already seen a drop in our junk-mail intake. I suppose it's possible that I will someday wish that Visa would send me yet another credit card application or that I could only get my hands on the latest Pyramid Catalogue but it's a risk I'm willing to take.