Wanderings – Stop wasting money filling my mailbox

A trip to the mailbox should be a joyful moment in time during the holiday season. Presents ordered online for family arriving on time, or Christmas cards from relatives and friends finding their way to you. Good things, happy things. Yet I find this season I am annoyed when I go to the mail box. It’s not the presents or cards, or even flyers that are annoying me – it’s the junk mail. And I can’t seem to do anything about it.

Earlier this year I donated money to a well-known cancer research hospital in Toronto. Not a lot of money, $25 (the amount here adds to this story.) A guy I know was raising money in support of the hospital, and given my family history, my thought was that this is a worthy cause.

Since that donation, I have received five solicitations from the hospital’s fundraising team asking for more donations. Fancy coated paper envelopes, colour printing, and a self-addressed and pre-stamped return envelope. Working in the field, I have a good idea what the printing and mailing costs are for those letters. Combined with a person’s time for calling me three times since the donation inviting me to give more, and the phone charges, I think it is safe to assume that my donation did not go towards finding a cure for anything – maybe a paper cut or unemployment.

I’ve asked to be removed from this hospital’s mailing list. I even wrote on the colourful form they sent and returned it along with the envelope they used to mail to me, using the convenient postage-paid envelope. The mailings still arrive. I asked the person on the phone the third time to delete my phone number and mailing address so as not to disturb me – but to no avail.

I’m not trying to be disagreeable, but at this point the charity is going to start going into deficit trying to solicit from my stone wallet – they just need to remove me from the list.

For many years I’ve made it a point to donate money locally when I can. Money to the food bank or the Angel Tree stays in the community. The food bank can take that money and buy a lot more food with it than I can. Who knows, a future cancer researcher could be helped here.

The other junk mail annoyance for me, partisan political mailings. I get the need for elected officials to keep constituents up-to-date – some are better than others at that job.

But it bothers me when that the ones footing the sole cost of that are citizens. Flyers, newsletters, glossy cards, and even yearly calendars arrive. I guess politicians never heard of calendars on their cell phones.

Even more annoying is that these individuals don’t see the waste at the post office. You know a political mailing has arrived because the recycling bin is overflowing. The “news” didn’t even make it out the door. At least the trash bin is well informed about the goings on in Ottawa or Toronto.

These political mailings are paid for by us. Sure it’s only a few million here and there for representatives to have “free” mail and to have their printed materials printed, but that few million could go anywhere else – literally anywhere else.

Give that money to youth sports programs across Canada, or food banks, or Angel Tree programs, and you can only imagine how far that money will be stretched and how much good will be done with it.

It’s also annoying because there are so many better, and more environmentally friendly methods to communicate – ones that don’t leave heaps of un-recyclable paper in landfills.

I shouldn’t feel annoyed during the holiday season by this, but I can’t help it. This junk mail is the gift no one wanted or asked for, and no one can stop.

I think I’ll put my request on the top of my Christmas Wish List to Santa Claus. If I start seeing donation requests from the postal code H0H 0H0, I know what list I will have made it on to.