Or may be a secret authorization code, which is unique for you, generated by USPS. You give that code to the senders from whom you want the paper mail. USPS only delivers the mail to you, which has that code.

You nailed it! This is something I have been thinking of for a long time. I have been meaning to ask our postman or somebody at the post office about it. But I think that they must have something already in place where if such mail is rejected by the receipiant, it is just dumped by the postal service rather than actually being sent back to the sender. I'm pretty sure the junk mailer would have that covered. And in which case, all we would be doing is needlessly burdening the postal services without achieving our goal which is to hot back at the junk mailers.

Better yet, an opt-out list. You list your address as opted out of all bulk and mass mailings. The post office compiles this stuff and lets mass marketers know how many mailable addresses remain in a given zip code.

The mass marketers can then produce only so much junk mail as they have addresses willing to accept it. Over time they will have to entice people to receive it, for example via coupons for things people really use.

Ultimately we have to move away from the use of paper as a carrier-medium for advertising and daily news, since those applications are use-once-throw-away and the amount of energy and trees wasted on them is unsustainable.

I think that the Post Office would have to set up this system. The original post suggests that this is already in place, whereas I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

I agree that the garbage mail is not only environmentally unfriendly, and a unnessary inconvenience but "returning to sender" unfortunately doesn't work. I have asked many a postman/woman and they have all told me that 2nd and 3rd class mail is never returned to the sender but just thrown away. We need to get a referendum on the Ballot of a Presidential Election SO WE CAN VOTE AWAY THIS ABOMINATION!!!The Congress gets paid from Government $$$... taxes, USPS $$$..so they won't ever stop allowing its own entity from making $$$ sending us garbage that we have to go through to get our legitimate mail day after day as the environment suffers etc...We should have a National Law on the books protecting our mail Privacy! We need an "Opt Out" choice!. These unscrupulous companies send out garbage catalogs to old people that order as they are getting Alzheimers etc...Bush got us the "Do Not Call" list..Now it's time for the "Do Not Mail " list!! Some politician should run promoting the resolving of these annoying issues! Will it ever happen?? Not unless we do it together. Thanks, Mark

But what you can do is take all of the junk mail that has "pre-paid return postage" and fill the envelope with the heaviest pieces of material you can put in there without causing the post office equipment to have problems (rocks will cause problems, heavy metal strips are okay). That way, the originator of junk mail will have to pay much increased postage. After doing that a few times, somehow you get black-listed from getting junk mail. My Dad did this and he rarely gets any junk mail anymore. A few times a month and that's it.

I wonder if you could tape a pre-paid postage junk mail envelope to a box filled with rocks and send a 10 pound package back to the junk mail originator?