Last Updated on February 22, 2013 by New-Startups Team
There are spam filters for you digital mail, but there never seems a way to stop the useless junk mail that comes to your physical box. PaperKarma tackles the mission to help you take control of your home or business mailbox and to receive only what you want. Businesses don’t want to spend needlessly on paper products that will just be trashed anyways, so why should you keep receiving them?
The iPhone, Android, and Windows app is a product of Readabl Inc. from Seattle. They work closely with source distribution companies to help you unsubscribe from catalogs, magazines, credit card offers, etc. and optionally – i.e., if you explicitly choose to – convert you to the corresponding online (email) versions. According to their website PaperKarma was started to deal with the environmental impacts attached with trashing junk mail and the frustrations that accompany seeing things you know are just a waste of time.
“Each US household receives about 850 pieces of junk mail per year. For every mail you want, you receive about 20 unwanted ones. This adds up to more than 100 BILLION pieces of mail per year for the US, about 44% of which goes into landfills without even being opened! The damage to the environment, carbon footprint, wasted energy, etc. is considerable. And let’s not forget about the frustration and wasted time – you’ll spend about 8 months of your life dealing with unsolicited mail. We started PaperKarma to simultaneously address this environmental problem as well as to help reach a happy compromise between customers and marketers: receive only want you want, and ideally get most of what you want in electronic form.”
Simply snap a picture of the junk mail you no longer want to receive, press send and PaperKarma does the rest to get you unsubscribed. Although this seems too good to be true, those that have tested the app attest it actually does work. Within 24 hours you usually attain conformation of your subscription withdrawal and a junk free mailbox.