Here’s the next entry in my little series on how to save the world with minimal effort. I’ve already talked about some ways to address water usage, and this week I’m going to start talking about how to reduce the amount of stuff you bring into your house in the first place, because that’s a bit part of reducing your footprint in the world.

In order for something to be included in this series, I have to ask myself if it’s something that pretty much anyone could do without an unreasonable amount of effort. In some cases, the things I recommend actually involve negative effort (as in, don’t buy shit), and in other cases, a little bit of effort is involved, but I still don’t think it involves undue sacrifice or difficulties. Others might disagree. This week’s entry in particular is more open to debate, I think, but I’m writing it anyway.

This week, I’m talking about how to reduce the amount of useless mail in your life. The volume of paper in the form of junk mail, unopened bank statements, and so forth which gets tossed in this country is pretty incredible, and it’s easy to reduce.

Start with junk mail: sign up for a junk mail service. These services send you addressed and pre-paid envelopes which you stuff with your junk mail. They study your junk mail, and in return, they get your name pulled from mailing lists so that you don’t get as much junk mail. I don’t actually get that much junk mail, so I don’t know the name of a service off the top of my head, which means y’all are going to have to do a little Googling for this one.

Cancel your newspaper subscription: if you subscribe to a newspaper, stop. Most newspapers have online editions which are fully accessible, often for free, so you will save money and paper. If your paper doesn’t reprint everything online, respectfully write and suggest that they start. You can even indicate that you would be willing to pay a fee to access premium content, if you want. I know that some people really like the dead tree editions of newspapers, but, uh, get over it.

Cancel paper statements: almost all banks, lenders, and credit card companies offer an electronic statement option, so use it. By stopping paper statements, you can save a bunch of paper, and reduce the risk of identity theft (assuming you toss statements after reading them, although I guess a lot of people save them). You will still get some physical mail, but the amount will be greatly reduced. Plus, you’ll free up a ton of space in your filing cabinets by having your bills archived on someone else’s dime.

Online ordering: bundle orders together as much as possible to reduce packaging, and, as always, ask yourself if you really need whatever it is that you’re ordering, or see if you can get it locally to reduce the use of packaging/shipping while supporting a local business. (Unless, of course, you live in Fort Bragg, where you can’t buy anything useful locally.)

While some people might argue that paper is recyclable, and therefore not that big a deal, paper waste is a big issue. By reducing overall demand for paper, we can reduce the stress on the world’s forests, and reduce pollution from paper mills and printshops. Also, paper recycling is expensive, time consuming, and often polluting, so even if you do recycle your paper, it doesn’t totally absolve you. Furthermore, a lot of paper which people innocently recycle ends up in landfills, for a variety of reasons, so even when you think you’re doing the right thing, you might be foiled by the recycling industry. Besides, who wants a bunch of stupid mail anyway?