It's Easy Being Green

YN Interviews Kendra Ott, Marketing Director of GreenDimes
By qhjones (22, Oberlin, Ohio)

YN polled a group near our office this week and heard that 8 of every 10 pieces of mail most people receive are junk. WTF? Unlike others, GreenDimes provides a green service that no consumer can forgo. The Palo Alto-based organization not only saves trees, but rids mailboxes of unwanted junk mail to do so. To abolish paper waste, GreenDimes created an automated system that removes names from junk mail listings. Their accomplishments can be seen on their homepage, which features a ticker that illustrates just how much is conserved every second.

YN heard about GreenDimes through their support of The RE*Generation at Virgin Festival, where they matched all funds raised at the concert for The RE*Generation partners. Check out YN’s interview with GreenDimes below, try their service and sign their online petition for a “National Do Not Mail” Registry.

What is GreenDimes’ mission and what does the organization do?
A company working to stop residential junk-mail, our goal is [to] provide a consumer benefit that frees up a consumer’s time and save resources. Over 100 million trees are cut down and 28 billion gallons of water are used [annually] to produce junk mail. There are 113 million households in American, all of which get junk mail, and we’re pretty sure that no one likes it.

From where did the idea for GreenDimes originate? And how did this Green movement grow from concept to existence?
GreenDimes is the brain child of Pankaj Shah, our CEO. He’s a serial entrepreneur. GreenDimes is his third startup. After his second startup, he took some time off at home and noticed the junk mail he was receiving and decided to do something about it. We’re 10 months old and [consist of] 12 people.

So, there are a lot of mailboxes in the US and a lot of credit card companies with my name and knowledge of my spending habits. And I’m just one guy. How do you successfully operate a program so massive with such a small staff?
There three steps when you sign up at GreenDimes. We have an automated system that removes your name from direct mailer’s lists. Second, there’s a handful of direct mailers that don’t accept submissions from third parties, so we send you a post card that you fill out to remove you from those lists. Third, and most important, we have a database to which you can log [on to] and select the catalogues you don’t and do want to receive. Those three steps can effectively eliminate 70-90% of your junk mail.

It’s kinda funny that your company’s goal is to go out of business by abolishing junk mail all together. How do you pitch that to investors?
It’s in our website and our mission that we do [want to put ourselves out of business]. We recently started a no-junk mail list similar to the no-call list. There’s close to 3,000 signatures and we just launched three weeks ago. It’s free and we’ll take it to Congress. So if we abolish junk mail, then we’re on to the next thing.

I’ve been told that you sponsored Virgin Festival. How did you get involved with Virgin and what other partnerships do you have?
We were invited to be part of V[irgin] Fest as part of the green initiative. They wanted forward-thinking green organizations to come and share their progress. We knew that YouthNoise was a partner of theirs so we saw an opportunity to move past green initiatives and help other non-profits. So we matched the ticket sales at Virgin Festival to be donated to other non-profits. It’s part of [our] mission to make small changes that are making a big difference.