Junk mail, be (nearly) gone!

Chris Smith

Imagine, for a moment, a better world: one in which the seas aren’t rising, Ralph Nader is just another consumer advocate, and a Pottery Barn catalog doesn’t land in your mailbox every single week. Ah, to dream.

While you may not be able to do much about Nader or those rising waters, you can do something about the junk mail. For a small annual fee, Palo Alto–based GreenDimes will confront the Lords of Junk and get you removed from their lists—forever. The brainchild of Pankaj Shah, a 34-year-old tech startup veteran, GreenDimes had its genesis at the tail end of a long trip a few years ago. “I got home and saw this mound of junk mail,” Shah remembers, “and the idea just came to me.” Within a few months of signing up, he says, you should see a 75 to 90 percent reduction in unwanted catalogs and credit card offers. Just specify what you still want to receive, and wave goodbye to the rest. If you’re looking for testimonials, actor-activist Matt Damon seems like a satisfied customer: he received GreenDimes as a gift and liked it so much that he went on Oprah to sing its praises.

There are limits to the company’s reach, though. GreenDimes doesn’t go after charitable organizations unless you request it, so you’ll still receive those Humane Society stamps every year until you choose otherwise. And what about political mailers? With election season upon us, maybe you’d like to opt out of the avalanche of four-color hit pieces, peppy testimonials from firefighters or teachers, and dire missives from antitax groups warning of the impending (Democratic-led) apocalypse. No dice. You can’t block political speech, says Eric Jaye, proprietor of the San Francisco consulting firm Storefront Political Media, which is handling Gavin Newsom’s mayoral campaign this fall. When told of GreenDimes, though, Jaye lights up: “Please tell me how to sign up. I get tons of junk mail.”