by Rich Schiffer, Weichert, Realtors

Direct Mail Marketing is a Big Business, and it creates a big impact in our lives -- Bigger than most people realize. 

I am sure that Real Estate Professionals (myself included), when marketing the properties their clients are selling, are guilty of producing a significant portion of direct mail advertising. 

Have you ever stopped to consider the actual that direct mail marketing has on our environment?

Here are some alarming facts, (courtesy of RecycleStuff.org)

• More than 4 million tons (62 billion pieces) of junk mail is produced yearly.
• 42% of timber harvested nationwide ends up as pulpwood for paper.
• 40% of Municipal Solid Waste is paper and paperboard.
• Americans spend over $275 million to dispose of junk mail annually.
• Individually, an average of 41 pounds of junk mail are sent to every adult each year, 44% of which goes to a landfill unopened.

There is hope, however.  Many "Junk Mail Reduction Kits" are available to help reduce the amount of junk mail you receive each year.  By some accounts, the tips in these kits can reduce your junk mail by up to 90%. 

Residents of Chester County, Pennsylvania can "Just Say No to Junk Mail", thanks to a program sponsored by the Southern Chester County Refuse Authority.

A free Online "Junk Mail Reduction Kit" is also available from recyclestuff.org

• DirectMail.com has an online form to fill out to remove you from their lists.
  
  
• For a one-time fee of $15, a company called GreenDimes.com will do the "work" of getting your name off the mailing lists for you, and will plant 10 trees on your behalf, to boot.
  
  
• StopTheJunkMail.com will do it for $19.95.  They will also plant a tree and make a $1 donation to the American Forest tree fund for each new "member."
  
  
• 41Pounds.org offers a 5-year anti-junk mail service for $41.  One third of that fee is donated to an environmental or community organization of your choice when you register.
  

Now that I am aware of the impact that Direct Mail Marketing has on the environment, I think that I will concentrate more of my marketing efforts online.  Here are some of the tools that Realtors can use to make leave a smaller "footprint" on our planet as we go about earning our living:

1. Make information about properties you are marketing available to consumers online.  Blogs posted on the Active Rain Real Estate Network's Listings By Address group get good results in the search engines.
2. Use Paperless Marketing Materials whenever possible.  vFlyer.com is one great resource for getting online exposure for your properties.
3. When you must use printed materials, try to use both sides of the page whenever possible.  Some printers have an "auto-duplexing" feature that will enable you to do this without having to wonder about which way to put the paper back into the printer.  Photo-copiers also often have a 2-sided copying feature.

The most important thing is to simply be mindful of the impact that we make -- not the impact we usually think of (the glossy full color "just listed" post cards, for example, that so many of us use to make an "impact" with the buyers in our markets) -- I mean the impact that we make on our environment.