May 21, 1989

SUPPOSEDLY THE next big investment opportunity is companies that invent products to help preserve or clean up the environment. Entrepreneurs who find a technological way around some of our more idiotic soilings of our nest are going to strike it rich.

But I don’t hear anyone talking about the one national epidemic that technology is making worse: junk paper.
When my postman arrives, looking like an overworked llama, he stuffs about a quarter inch worth of store circulars into my mailbox along with the rest of the unsolicited garbage that I call Mail Merge from Hell: “Dennise Carso, We Know You Are a Travel Agent for the Guilt Trip, So Give Us Your Money and We’ll Leave You Alone! And if You Believe That, Dennise, Please Read On…!”

When I ask my postman how he feels about the junk, which takes up most of his satchel, he shrugs and says bulk mail is a plague on humanity but he has to deliver it anyhow.

Going to The Examiner to pick up my weekly mountain of press releases is worse. A recent pile was so big that it hurt my back to stand and hold it. I took it home and dutifully opened every single piece. When I was done, I salvaged three — THREE, that’s it — that were of any interest to me whatsoever. The rest overflowed my trash bin. Every week, I get at least one piece of mail from Oracle Corp. The Association for Better Computer Dealers sends something almost every day. I can count on one hand the times I’ve written even a paragraph based on a release from either.

What hath technology wrought? More insidious ways to annoy the hell out of people and destroy the environment at the same time? If so, we’re doing a good job. I’m glad desktop publishing is such a success. I love the idea of having my own “press.” But now every schmoe with a computer and laser printer has decided that the “cast your net upon the waters” approach to public relations and/or direct mail marketing is the only way to snag a fish.

There ought to be a law against unsolicited mail. Direct mailers believe a good response to a mailing is 2 percent, which means that 98 percent of all that paper is completely wasted. Please recall that paper is made from trees, trees make oxygen, and we’re already losing quite a few trees down in the Amazon every day. I’d kind of like to hang onto the ones we’ve got left, being fond of breathing as I am.

Bernie Krause, a Bay Area sound engineer who synthesizes animal noises into music, once said to me, “What makes you think the San Francisco Examiner is worth the death of a tree?” It’s a little hard to get totally behind Bernie’s sincerity — his public relations agency sent me one of the biggest press kits I’d ever seen, printed on lots of unrecycled paper — but I certainly appreciate the sentiment. It’s hard to think of anything I get in the mail that is worth the death of a tree.

And as databases and computer technology improve, the scenario is only going to get worse. Factor in the approaching horror of junk fax, and the whole thing starts looking pretty abusive. What are we going to do about it?

I’ve said it before. This country needs a electronic mail system that can eliminate some of the incredible paper overload we have sitting around our houses. How many trees would be saved a year just by publishing a national, electronic telephone directory?

Thankfully, some people in high-tech are starting to use e-mail intelligently. Marty Winston is a Fort Worth PR guy whose paper press releases I hardly ever throw away. He uses MCI Mail, not surface mail, to broadcast info about his clients to a lineup of journalists worldwide. You can take what you like from his tip sheet and leave the rest.

Laurie McLean of McLean Public Relations in Redwood City says her agency just had a big powwow and decided to put extra effort into only sending press releases to those reporters with reason to be interested in a client.
“There was a general concern in the agency about the environment and what we could do about it,” McLean said. “So we decided to specialize our mailing list, and treat each release as a project where you pick the people who’d benefit from receiving it.” In addition, she says, they will augment the mailing list by posting releases electronically as often as possible.

Other answers are available if you look in the right places. Though some people think them annoying, the Prodigy Interactive Personal Service (there’s a good story on Prodigy in the May issue of “Personal Computing”) uses rotating on-screen ads. That concept might help some direct mailers and others to detox from the paper habit and get into the world of on-line.