Junk Mail Mulch

[WRTN]

What do you do with your junk mail? I get so much of it, that I just don't care to go through it all. Throwing it in the trash I was concerned about my personal information being compromised. Burning it is a pain in the butt. I tried a cheap single cut shreader but that was also very time consuming and generated huge volumes of long paper shreds.

I finally broke down and purchased a Fellow MS-450Cs double cut/cross cut shreader. Now the junk mail gets cut up into very fine confetti like mulch material. Each piece of cut up shreaded paper is cut into a piece a little smaller than 1/16th in. x 1/4 in.

This size makes it perfect for spreading on the lawn around the house where it is broken down and absorbed into the soil in a matter of weeks. It also should make a good soil amendment for your garden when tilled into the soil or compost pile. So far I generate a paper grocery bag's worth of shreded material every week to 2 weeks.

Anything left over that will not go through the shreadder is burned in the wood furnace or burn barrel which is not very much.

I've found this makes for a LOT fewer trips to the dump and trash collection points, keeps my any personal information that may be in the junk mail secure, and provides a nature friendly means of disposing of junk mail while at the same time building up the soil as well as my lawn. ;)

Anyhow, just thought I would pass this along for anyone else who may be fed up with junk mail.

[Maverick]

So much of our junk mail is the slickery inky paper and also there seems to be a lot of plastic, be it faux credit cards, windows on the envelope, or stickers and such. I don't know how well that would be for mulch... it's different ink and paper than newspaper.

The kiddos like running the shredder so about once a month or so they get the task of shredding everything up (but the postpaid envelopes) and dumping it into a paper bag. I then mix the "confetti" up and stuff the saved envelopes plumb-full and seal.

Next trip to the PO they get mailed back to the companies at their expense.

I figure if I have to spend my time and energy dealing with their UNrequested garbage, they can spend a bit of their resources too.

I have noticed since I started doing this that I don't have near the junk I used to.... where I used to get 3 and 6 credit cards offers daily, I may only get one or two a week.

[Florida_boy]

I think I like WR's idea better. I was just think of mulching some collards today. I guess I better break out the shreader and get busy. I wonder if I'll end up with termites in the mulch that way?
Maverick you might want to consider the junk mail a little differently as well. Look at it like this. I was a mail contractor for 9 years and the Postal Service takes a dim view of anyone inside calling it junk mail. A fellow told me once, son if it pays your salary it isn't junk. Consider that the USPS actually makes money off of the bulk rate business mail. It looses money on first class mail. The result is that things balance out and it doesn't cost you $1.25 to mail a first class letter. For .41 cents I can mail a letter from my house in Fla. all the way to Ak. In the UK it costs something like .60 cents to go 300 miles.

[WRTN]

I pick out the plastic fake credit cards and other non compost material which goes to the wood furnace. As I understand it, most ink is soy based ink now which is biodegradable.

[DM]

I tear it up and use "their" prepaid enveloupe to send it back to them. Maybe making them pay twice will help the PO from raiseing there prices to me?

DM