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

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tshaddox 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.)

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digitalsushi 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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slillibri 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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mikestew 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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jghn 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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Teever 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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lenerdenator 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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_ 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.