A week ago, I signed up for paperless bank statements and paperless billing. Additionally, I signed up on GreenDimes. Shortly after I posted about this, a fellow by the name of SanjDimes, who is apparently affiliated with GreenDimes, asked that I wait at least three months before I review the effectiveness of the service. That gave me an idea. Why don’t I spend that three months documenting the amount of mail I receive, and how much of that is junk? This will give me empirical evidence of the success or failure of my experiment.

Monday and Tuesday

We never got around to checking the mail on Monday, so the first two days of this week have been combined.

• New home survey from CIDR Systems. This is actually the second copy we’ve received, since I couldn’t be bothered to fill out the first one (they’re kind of annoying).
• Credit card offer from Southwest Airlines. Incidentally, I received this same offer at work. Two pieces of junk mail for the price of one.
• Credit card offer from Chase, advertising their “card factory,” whatever that is.
• Bill from American Express. This was mailed before I opted for paperless billing.
• Greeting card for Mrs. sirhc.
• Several grocery store circulars. I did, however, pull out the advertisements for Sprouts and Vons.
• PennySaver and associated circulars.
• California primary election sample ballots. Yes, we’re having another one this year. No, I don’t know why they couldn’t be combined into one.
• Costco coupon book.
• Postcard reminding me to spend my Costco credit card rebate. Of course, I have already done this, so the reminder is pointless.
• Advertisement for a local tanning salon.
• June 2008 issue of Linux Journal. I don’t intend to renew my subscription. I never get around to reading it anymore, and most of the articles end up on their web site anyway.
• Brochure for the 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference. Did I really need a hard copy of this?
• AAA offer to upgrade my membership. Just like last year, and the year before that, I’m not interested.

Wednesday

• Another greeting card for Mrs. sirhc. Well, we are expecting a baby, and Mother’s Day is this weekend.
• Our absentee ballots for that superfluous California primary election.
• Terms and conditions for my wireless phone protection plan.
• A neighbor’s advertisement for Ocean Enterprises. I wonder how much of my own mail ends up in my neighbors’ hands. Good thing I’m going paperless.
• Brochure for this year’s LinuxWorld conference. Yet another advertisement that could have been sent via e-mail. I expect better of technical conferences.

Thursday

• Workforce and community development course catalog from Palomar College.

Friday

• Circulars for local chain stores (Target, Rite-Aid, etc.).
• Advertisement for Discount Tires.
• Our “voting guide” for California’s upcoming primary election. I don’t know what I’d do without people sending me mail to tell me how I should vote.
• Solicitation to alumni to pledge money for UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. This was sent because I refused to pledge money to someone who cold-called me soliciting money.

Saturday

• Time magazine. I won’t be renewing my subscription after next month. It’s another magazine I no longer have time (ha ha) to read, and the articles all end up on the web site anyway.
• City news and recreation guide for the city of San Marcos. I’ll have to read through this to see if it’s something I want.
• Invitation to the Zoological Society of San Diego’s Member Appreciation Evening. I’ve been a member for a number of years, so I expect these things.
• Solicitation to become a member of the Birch Aquarium. Nice, but I’ll pass for now.

The first thing I’ve learned from this experiment is that it’s not as easy as I expected to distinguish the signal from the noise. Some pieces of mail—the credit card offers—are obviously junk. Some pieces of mail—the greeting cards—are obviously not junk. Others, such as the San Marcos recreation guide or the circulars for stores we actually shop at, are not so easy to classify. For the purposes of this experiment, I will classify them as junk, because they were unsolicited commercial mail. This, as some may recognize, is similar to the official definition of spam e-mail. That said, what was my signal to noise ratio?

We received 13 pieces of desired (or not so desired in the case of bills and ballots) mail and 15 pieces of junk mail. While these numbers may look close to equal, much of the junk mail was composed of circulars and brochures, which consist of much more paper than the typical desired piece of mail. Next week I may need to refine my measurement criteria by counting the number of unique advertisements in each circular.