Junk Mail

[cjsmith]

Sunnyvale has an "approved method" of recycling junk mail. It is this.

1. Put all the junk mail in a sturdy paper bag such as you might get at a grocery store.
2. Put the bag in your trash container and put the container out at curbside.
3. Their hand-sorters will go through all the trash at the dump and sort out your junk mail for recycling.

Some questions come immediately to mind. Do they WANT the junk mail flying like confetti all over the interior of the garbage truck as soon as the trash container is upended? Just how well-sealed is my kitchen garbage bag? How much do these sorters get paid??

[Poll #481647]

Comments

[hanov3r.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of _Inside the Spam Cartel_ which, while fanciful in some places, has me thinking about privacy issues. I *hope* that you're shredding your junk mail before it goes in for recycling...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Some of it. Anything related to accounts, statements, bills, or offers. Of course, much of the bulk is stuff like catalogs.

Anything that has only my name and address I don't shred -- half the time I think my address is already public so there's no need, but the other half of the time I think I can't be too careful. Do you shred anything at all that has your name and address on it?

[kennita.livejournal.com]

I don't, partly because my mailing address is not my physical address. Also, the junk mail I get doesn't generlly have privileged information in it. As soon as I see an account number, though -- into the shredder it goes.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That last is true for me too. When I was cleaning up this past weekend, I used the shredder so much that it started smelling bad. (I had quite the backlog of stoopid things like "Use these credit card checks before May 15 and get n.nn rate".)