It’s become a daily ritual: rifling through your mail to separate real notices from advertisements.
With each person receiving nearly 560 pieces of junk mail a year, a group of Michigan residents has come up with an idea to curb the waste.
Sander DeVries, and his brothers Shane Pfannes and Tim Pfannes, launched an online business to help people remove their names from direct mailing lists.
Tim came up with the idea because he was tired of his kitchen counter overflowing with junk mail, DeVries said.
With help from Shane and Sander, he spent a year researching organizations that take people off mailing lists. He passed along the information to family and friends but soon found no one had time to make phone calls or send e-mails.
Then he turned his brainstorm into a business, charging clients for help and donating some of the proceeds to nonprofit groups.
They launched their web site 41pounds in July. The service’s name refers to the 41 pounds of junk mail a person receives each year.
The efforts can be used as a fundraising drive for nonprofit schools and organizations that register with the site. Half the profits go to the organization designated by the subscriber.
“We’re not in it for the profits,” DeVries said. “We just want to make our money back and get people to sign up.”
Photo by 41pounds.org.
annalaura on February 28th, 2007 at 5:33 am
What a great idea? It’s about time someone came up with something like this.
Derrick Smith on April 5th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
um, yeah right - 41pounds is just two guys trying to make money… the company that really came up with this idea and whom I am a proud member of is http://www.greendimes.com