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We could immediately provide relief to fuel prices, while doing the climate a huge favor, by immediately suspending the USPS accepting marketing material throug

We could immediately provide relief to fuel prices, while doing the climate a huge favor, by immediately suspending the USPS accepting marketing material through the mail. My mailbox is permanently jammed with paper that useless paper that is both produced and hauled away to a landfill by diesel fuel. No I do not want your credit card offer. No I do not want to switch phone plans. No I do not want an extended warranty.

ssl-3 7mo ago
What percentage of overall vehicular fuel use does junk mail (from inception to landfill) constitute, might you suppose?
- Teever 7mo ago
  It's not just the vehicular fuel that goes into this process, it's the growing the trees, harvesting them, making them into paper, then combining that paper with ink that likely has a similarly complex supply chain on a printing press that consumes a lot of power. Getting flyers that are subsidized by the post office for stuff like lawnmowers and patio furniture even though I live in an apartment is peak absurdity.
  - lenerdenator 7mo ago
    I live in what was a family member's house before her passing in 2014. I still receive her mail. Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there. It's an insanely wasteful practice.
    - singleshot_ 7mo ago
      Write “rejected” on all the mail you don’t want and leave it unopened in your box. Cuts it down nearly to zero after a few months.
      - lenerdenator 7mo ago
        Will give that a try, thanks
- digitalsushi 7mo ago
  If the majority of mail stops are junk mail only, I would love to see some napkin math of the effect of all those diesel/gasoline accelerations per mailbox, dropped across the daily fleet of drop offs.
  - slillibri 7mo ago
    Stopping marketing mail wouldn’t change the number of accelerations per mailbox. USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. The only difference would be in weight carried.
    - jghn 7mo ago
      Depends. Where I live outgoing mail goes into the closest blue USPS bin. And given that most days all mail I receive is slop, removing the slop would remove the need to come to my house. Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into account things like fuel costs for planes & such throughout the entire supply chain.
    - mikestew 7mo ago
      USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
- tshaddox 7mo ago
  Percentage of mass is probably the wrong metric to look at, because it assumes that the USPS could simply eliminate the X% of mass used by junk mail and save roughly X% on fuel/delivery costs. But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be financially solvent, at least with the current level of service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more than enough!
  - ssl-3 7mo ago
    I think the real issue in this context is the 3.5% surcharge that Amazon may add, and whether or not elimination of USPS junk mail could ever make a dent in that 3.5% figure. (My gut says that it would not; that the fuel use of junk mail constitutes a very small drop in a very large bucket. But I'd love to be wrong about this.)
jackling 7mo ago
Not sure how it is in America, but in Canada you can post a note inside your mailbox stating that you don't want unaddressed mail. https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consumers-choice.page https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consu...
- rkagerer 7mo ago
  I'm tried that, I've even plasterd the inside of my mailbox with a mini-poster directing to not leave it, and it hasn't worked at all.
calvinmorrison 7mo ago
In FY2022, fuel consumption was 221 million gallons of gasoline equivalent, with gasoline or diesel making up 99%. USPS fleet greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) made up 70% of overall GHGs for federal fleet vehicles in FY2022. 50-60% of all mail is marketing slop
- exabrial 7mo ago
  Honestly I'd be surprised if it's that low. My guess is by weight its closer to 85%-95%. Your numbers show exactly what I was guessing to be true though. Incredible this has never been enforced.
- mrguyorama 7mo ago
  Mail delivery vehicles have to travel roughly the same paths as long as there is most anything to deliver. That's what makes it a public service. Junk mail just makes stamps cheaper. That route had to be driven anyway. You have generally what amounts to a right to put a stamped letter in your box at the end of the driveway, put up the flag, and get serviced. The route has to be driven regardless. We could eliminate all marketing mail, make a large push to make all billing digital, and USPS would still have to drive most routes most days. A fix would have to reduce service significantly, or introduce a new "Register for pickup" process to signal your need of service. We could have also made those brand new mail vehicles hybrid or something.
  - calvinmorrison 7mo ago
    yes a public advertising delivery service
mikestew 7mo ago
$8, and that all stops for ten years: https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.
- youarentrightjr 7mo ago
  Sounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't work).
  - mikestew 7mo ago
    It indeed has a fishy smell to it. But as I thought through it, if it were free then some bozo would spam an entire address database and then we can't have nice things anymore. The ten year expiration is sketchy, but I guess someone is hoping you'll let it expire (I've never received a "renewal notice", as it were.) And, yeah, "nice mailbox, shame if it got filled with shit you didn't ask for." OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.
  - culi 7mo ago
    Smells fishy indeed by it's just $8 per 10 years... Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service
usefulcat 7mo ago
Reducing the frequency of mail delivery would have a much larger impact, since most of fuel is probably consumed by last mile delivery. Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.
- browningstreet 7mo ago
  Fewer mail carriers could hit twice as many places in a given time-frame and reduce overall gas usage.
lokar 7mo ago
A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary? Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.
  - lokar 7mo ago
    I think it's mostly not needed, but there are a lot of edge cases or narrow situations where it's important. They could be fixed, but no one is doing that. IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery, and where addresses are very spread out, require centralized boxes.
  - michaelt 7mo ago
    Traditionally, the state has certain duties it needs to perform for every member of the population. Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft registration, pensions, company registrations, patents, copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax paperwork, census, etc etc. It’s much simpler to perform these duties if you have a means of communication that can reliably reach every citizen.
    - SoftTalker 7mo ago
culi 7mo ago
If you live in the US you can stop almost all junk mail for $6 for a 10 year registration to DMA Choice https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522 https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522

ssl-3 7mo ago

What percentage of overall vehicular fuel use does junk mail (from inception to landfill) constitute, might you suppose?

Teever 7mo ago
It's not just the vehicular fuel that goes into this process, it's the growing the trees, harvesting them, making them into paper, then combining that paper with ink that likely has a similarly complex supply chain on a printing press that consumes a lot of power. Getting flyers that are subsidized by the post office for stuff like lawnmowers and patio furniture even though I live in an apartment is peak absurdity.
- lenerdenator 7mo ago
  I live in what was a family member's house before her passing in 2014. I still receive her mail. Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there. It's an insanely wasteful practice.
  - singleshot_ 7mo ago
    Write “rejected” on all the mail you don’t want and leave it unopened in your box. Cuts it down nearly to zero after a few months.
    - lenerdenator 7mo ago
      Will give that a try, thanks
digitalsushi 7mo ago
If the majority of mail stops are junk mail only, I would love to see some napkin math of the effect of all those diesel/gasoline accelerations per mailbox, dropped across the daily fleet of drop offs.
- slillibri 7mo ago
  Stopping marketing mail wouldn’t change the number of accelerations per mailbox. USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. The only difference would be in weight carried.
  - jghn 7mo ago
    Depends. Where I live outgoing mail goes into the closest blue USPS bin. And given that most days all mail I receive is slop, removing the slop would remove the need to come to my house. Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into account things like fuel costs for planes & such throughout the entire supply chain.
  - mikestew 7mo ago
    USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
tshaddox 7mo ago
Percentage of mass is probably the wrong metric to look at, because it assumes that the USPS could simply eliminate the X% of mass used by junk mail and save roughly X% on fuel/delivery costs. But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be financially solvent, at least with the current level of service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more than enough!
- ssl-3 7mo ago
  I think the real issue in this context is the 3.5% surcharge that Amazon may add, and whether or not elimination of USPS junk mail could ever make a dent in that 3.5% figure. (My gut says that it would not; that the fuel use of junk mail constitutes a very small drop in a very large bucket. But I'd love to be wrong about this.)

jackling 7mo ago

Not sure how it is in America, but in Canada you can post a note inside your mailbox stating that you don't want unaddressed mail. https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consumers-choice.page https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consu...

rkagerer 7mo ago
I'm tried that, I've even plasterd the inside of my mailbox with a mini-poster directing to not leave it, and it hasn't worked at all.

calvinmorrison 7mo ago

In FY2022, fuel consumption was 221 million gallons of gasoline equivalent, with gasoline or diesel making up 99%. USPS fleet greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) made up 70% of overall GHGs for federal fleet vehicles in FY2022. 50-60% of all mail is marketing slop

exabrial 7mo ago
Honestly I'd be surprised if it's that low. My guess is by weight its closer to 85%-95%. Your numbers show exactly what I was guessing to be true though. Incredible this has never been enforced.
mrguyorama 7mo ago
Mail delivery vehicles have to travel roughly the same paths as long as there is most anything to deliver. That's what makes it a public service. Junk mail just makes stamps cheaper. That route had to be driven anyway. You have generally what amounts to a right to put a stamped letter in your box at the end of the driveway, put up the flag, and get serviced. The route has to be driven regardless. We could eliminate all marketing mail, make a large push to make all billing digital, and USPS would still have to drive most routes most days. A fix would have to reduce service significantly, or introduce a new "Register for pickup" process to signal your need of service. We could have also made those brand new mail vehicles hybrid or something.
- calvinmorrison 7mo ago
  yes a public advertising delivery service

mikestew 7mo ago

$8, and that all stops for ten years: https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.

youarentrightjr 7mo ago
Sounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't work).
- mikestew 7mo ago
  It indeed has a fishy smell to it. But as I thought through it, if it were free then some bozo would spam an entire address database and then we can't have nice things anymore. The ten year expiration is sketchy, but I guess someone is hoping you'll let it expire (I've never received a "renewal notice", as it were.) And, yeah, "nice mailbox, shame if it got filled with shit you didn't ask for." OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.
- culi 7mo ago
  Smells fishy indeed by it's just $8 per 10 years... Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service

usefulcat 7mo ago

Reducing the frequency of mail delivery would have a much larger impact, since most of fuel is probably consumed by last mile delivery. Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.

browningstreet 7mo ago
Fewer mail carriers could hit twice as many places in a given time-frame and reduce overall gas usage.

lokar 7mo ago

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

SoftTalker 7mo ago
I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary? Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.
- lokar 7mo ago
  I think it's mostly not needed, but there are a lot of edge cases or narrow situations where it's important. They could be fixed, but no one is doing that. IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery, and where addresses are very spread out, require centralized boxes.
- michaelt 7mo ago
  Traditionally, the state has certain duties it needs to perform for every member of the population. Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft registration, pensions, company registrations, patents, copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax paperwork, census, etc etc. It’s much simpler to perform these duties if you have a means of communication that can reliably reach every citizen.
  - SoftTalker 7mo ago

culi 7mo ago

If you live in the US you can stop almost all junk mail for $6 for a 10 year registration to DMA Choice https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522 https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/77522