Long ago we made the switch to e-bills, directing our cell phone companies, electricity suppliers, and the usurious parties responsible for America's overspending — the credit card companies — to tell us via email how much they'd like to impact our net worth, rather than deforesting Brazil to deliver the bad news. It's our little part to save the environment. That it makes our inbox an even less hospitable environment to invest hours of our day in is the unfortunate side effect.

Now, the direct mail industry, responsible for clogging up your eight cubic inches of mailbox space with marketing come-ons, wants to do its part to reduce waste. That its entire industry is based on increasing waste is an irony lost on the industry.

But we'll hear them out. What grand plans do they have to make their biz more eco-friendly?

Nothing more than what sounds like a carefully orchestrated public relations and cost-saving campaign than an effort to save the environment. They will:

Use chlorine-free recycled paper. It's probably a cost-saving measure.

Proofread marketing materials using Adobe PDF files rather than hard copies. An efficiency measure to increase employee productivity.

Take advantage of tax benefits that come from certain green initiatives. The bottom line is what's most important.

Choose vendors that are committed to recycling. It'll make for a nice PSA or footnote on the website to show how committed they are to going green, without actually have to do anything themselves to cut down on waste.

Clean out direct-mail lists to remove the names of dead people and others unlikely to respond. Because these people don't make them money anyhow, so it's not worth wasting cash to mail them offers when there's no chance they'll respond.

Here's our suggestion: Maybe after sending out 15 credit card offers to the same person, none of which are sent back, banks might understand that we don't care if we're pre-qualified for a gold card; we don't want it.

[NYT]