I cut out almost all that stuff by going with email notification, on everything.

Catalogs. I get Ross-Simon and Pottery Barn catalogs at least once a month and sometimes several times a month.

Yes - Geico! I get 2 or more solicitations from them every week - such a waste of money. They top their paper ads by advertising on radio and t.v. every hour.

Pizza Hut continues to send out fliers for 'specials' - and spends $$$ Billions $$$ on radio and t.v. ads - ok, we get it!

I could go on and on about the junk mail that uses up our valuable resources.

Local hospital sends me a six page statement requesting prepayment for medical records EVERY SINGLE TIME I request records. That is hundreds of times a year. I simply need a one line note, "Please submit prepayment in the amount of ??? for copies of records"

Idaho Medicaid sent me a 46 page itemization of payments made on our client's behalf and only ONE of the charges of all 46 pages was related to our claim. (We are only responsible to reimburse for payments related the personal injury claim we are pursuing).

Don't even get me started on Medicare again. I send them a letter advising " ... we have settled (Client's) personal injury claim. Please provide an itemization of payments Medicare has paid (related to the claim) so we can reimburse you. "I send them a sheet with each visit, the date and the amount billed so they KNOW what we are responsible to pay back and they'll bounce form letters back and forth to our office for YEARS with absolutely no information at all regarding the actual balance due and owing. "I'M TRYING TO SEND YOU MONEY! TELL ME HOW MUCH WE OWE YOU!!!" How hard is that?

My credit cards and banks have offered me on-line statements, but I refuse. I need to see everything in print on plain white paper.

You know what was truly a waste of paper? The ridiculous letters from our "wonderful" government informing us that we would receive our census forms in the mail. What sort of idiots approved that waste of paper and money?

LOL Houstonmom, I beat ya - I got TWO letters before the actual census came! I was so P.O.ed!

Yes, the census letter was a waste of paper. What were we supposed to do? Sit on the front porch and wait?

Waste of paper--all those horrid blank checks that come with credit card bills.

This week I got a simple one-page acknowledgement letter from our life insurance company. Actually, it was not even a necessary communication. They sent it in a 12 x 16 envelope and it cost $1.05 to mail. I emailed them about it. (Bet I really shook them up--not.)

"Blue Cross/Anthem of Calif sends out notices each time you go to the DR. OK, but they also include 2 pages of foreign language dialect to contact a interpreter if you need them."

Hubs and I both work for the State of California, and we have the PERS Care medical insurance, which is Anthem/Blue Cross PPO. The only time we get any "paperwork" from them in the mail is when we receive the Explanation of Benefits form after they've paid out money to the provider. They can -- and do -- list more than one charge and more than one visit on a page. The only time there's more than one page is when they've paid out to more than one provider, because they only put one provider's claims on a page. But, I agree with doing it that way. And, when they do have to do that, they at least put all of the pages into one envelope, so they save trees by not putting only one page in an envelope.

Jannie....you can print out your statements yourself...make as copies as you want.

I prefer to archive mine on memory sticks....takes up less space.

I too prefer everything thru email or online...our mailbox is in a constant full state of JUNK!! I print what I need...

Remember when Computers were "new" and everything was supposed to be done by Computers, and that was going to save tons and tons of paper?

Sue

Computers DO save tons of paper.

It's computer users who won't give the paper up!

In 2005 my boss finally replaced our ancient computer and updated to one that retains everything. You can literally go back 5 years and pull up any report from any module you want. But, if you walk into his office you will see head high stacks of paper. He has to print out every thing and in a lot of cases, more than once as he can't find the original in that mess. So, what's up with that? And, are there others out there like him? I shudder to think of the trees wasted just for what he has stacked up.

Farmers Insurance wastes a TON of paper. I got sick of trying to make sense of it all and finally got everything onto one bill. So far so good.

Agree with the census letters. The census could be done on a postcard if they would just count people and quit with all the social engineering.

How many phone books are dumped each year? We get them from three different companies now. They go straight into our recycling bin.

wildchild - I certainly agree with the phone books being a waste! We get them at home and at the office. I never use them anymore because I can find just about everything I need simply by using google!

We got phone books from 11 different companies last year. Each leaves anywhere from 3 to 5 of them on the front porch because we are a business. That's 45 to 50 phone books I have to load up and haul to the recycling bin up at the high school, which pisses me off to no end!
The apartment building I lived in had 13 apartments. So every company piled up *their* phone books in the hallway right inside the front door, presumably for everybody to take one on their way in. I bet there were still 75 to 100 of them piled up in the hallway when I moved out. And they had been there for months!

I'm another one that wants paper. If you've ever been audited by the IRS you would know why! We were audited one year and couldn't for the life of us figure out why. Turns out Harry lumped his pension and SS on the same line and it kicked it out.

We had to have every single cancelled check, receipt, etc. for that whole year. We had the information we needed, but I'd hate to think what I'd have to pay for a years worth of cancelled checks or if we had no proof of the donations we gave--because they wanted proof of everything.

At the end, they sent us a really nice (?) letter thanking us for being upstanding taxpayers. Geez, we only give them what we owe and hopefully not a penny more ;-)

I get aggravated everytime I go to get stamps. I buy one book and my receipt is 12" long. And the post office is losing money..

susie53 -- Yes, and the receipts from the grocery store are overly lengthy. Are you supposed to think you got MORE for your money because the receipt is a yard long?

If I'd kept all the Citi American Express card offers we've gotten this winter I could paper the back hall. Stop already!

Since his father's death in the late 1940's my DH has received a government check for $1.89 every month. DH is beneficiary of an insurance policy his father took out when he served in WWI. It took us years to get them to issue just an annual check. I wonder how many other people are getting checks are worth less than they cost to issue and mail. (How many government employees spend their days overseeing this waste?)