It's All Paper to a Tree

According to John Kelly, "numbers count," a standard he fails to meet in his Aug. 29 column regarding advertising mail ["Junk Mail Weighs on Their Minds," Metro].

Mr. Kelly tells readers that in the course of a year Margaret Reynolds received 165 pounds of catalogues. This figure has no meaning unless we compare it with something. For instance, according to its 2005 annual report, The Washington Post consumed 175,300 tons of paper. Depending on how you calculate it, that works out to something like 500 pounds per reader per year. It's absurd, of course, to value either The Post or the mailstream by poundage -- a standard of common sense Mr. Kelly ignores.

Mr. Kelly never explains why advertising sent through the mail is a forestry concern while the same ad on the same paper is just dandy when inserted into The Post. He is apparently unaware that the volume of trees in the United States is increasing: "Forest land," New York Times columnist John Tierney wrote on April 23, "hasn't been shrinking at all -- it's been fairly stable since 1920 and has actually grown in the last decade."

Landfills worry Mr. Kelly, even though a billion tons of capacity have been added to landfill sites merely through the use of better technology. Mr. Kelly says nothing about the 9 million jobs anchored by the mailstream, how he would replace them if volume falls or which post offices he would close. Like numbers, jobs count and so does maintaining the economy.

PETER G. MILLER

Executive Director

Mail & Jobs Coalition

Silver Spring