Over the holidays, seasons greetings and yuletide cheers won’t be the only thing you get. Junk mail will surely be flooding your mail box whether it’s unsolicited catalogs or offers for credit cards.

While the holiday season typically sees an uptick in junk mail, a handful of companies are trying to combat that by offering services that take you off marketers' list and a do-not-mail petition akin to the do-not-call registry.

“November and December are the two biggest months” for junk mail, said Jalali Hartman, co-founder of the Privacy Council, an organization created to end unwanted mail. Direct marketing by blasting people with unsolicited mail is “intrusive, counter productive…and wasteful in the amount of energy it uses.” 

According to Hartman, the average person spends eight months of his or her life opening and discarding junk mail. What’s more, an average family will throw away the equivalent of an entire tree from unread junk mail -- and junk mail kills 100 million trees annually.  

The Privacy Council, founded by former marketing and direct marketing executives, was created to try to stem the flow of junk mail. For a $9 fee, home dwellers can sign up to remove the household from all the major marketing lists that are responsible for the majority of the junk mail. The $9 covers the expenses of mailing, faxing and calling all the major mailing, calling and marketing lists. For an additional $6 a month, the Privacy Council will continue to monitor the household to ensure it stays off the lists.

Currently the Privacy Council recommends users are taken off the lists and then manually sign up for the catalogs they want to receive. In the future the Privacy Council may offer a way to pick and choose which marketers can send you mail.

“It’s almost ludicrous that marketers are sending millions of pieces of information in hopes that a tiny percentage will respond. It’s wasteful,” said Hartman.

GreenDimes also offers a service that takes households off marketers’ lists, but lets you choose which catalogs you no longer want to receive. GreenDimes claims its service is about 90% effective. For $20 a year, subscribers will be automatically taken off marketing lists that are responsible for sending most of the credit card applications and generic mailers. Users also get to choose which catalogs they don’t want to get, monthly monitoring to ensure the name stays off the lists and the company will plant five trees on the subscribers benefit. 

For the direct marketers that won’t accept third-party requests for removal from lists, GreenDimes sends the subscriber a printed postcard with the postage that only needs to be signed and mailed in.

GreenDimes also offers a free service that, through its Web sites, requires you to choose which mailers you don’t want to receive. You have to print out, sign and mail letters provided by the company.

“During the holidays the increase is pretty brutal just because of the catalogs and charitable solicitations,” said Pankaj Shah, Chief Executive of GreenDimes. Shah noted that his two homes haven’t gotten a single piece of mail since the company launched the service two years ago.  

A free movement led by ForestEthics, a non-profit, aims to create a do not mail registry to potentially send to Congress for legislation.

“People are looking for a comprehensive solution to junk mail. They don’t want it and don’t want to be associated with the waste it generates,” said Will Craven, a spokesman for the Do Not Mail movement. Do Not Mail supports the creation of a national do not mail registry similar to the do not call registry and has already generated 75,000 signatures.  

While a Do Not Mail registry seems like a logical piece of legislation, given Craven said 89% of American support it, efforts in 19 states have already failed. Craven said the junk mail industry is a powerful group but the fact that bills have been introduced in 19 states, proves there’s interest in this kind of initiative.  Craven said it’s likely that a statewide bill would pass before there’s any movement on the federal front.

The way the registry would work is a household would continue to get direct mail from companies it has relationships with but the completely unsolicited mail would go away. Retailers and other companies would likely not be able to sell a households address to third parties. People can sign the petition on www.donotmail.org.

“The research indicates that in some cases they only need 0.25% response rate for it to be worth it for them to continues. It’s an incredible amount of waste,” said Craven.

But what if you don’t mind the pesky mail but can’t stand the numerous yellow pages phone books you get delivered each year. There’s a service to stop that too.

Called YellowPagesGoesGreen, the service started by recent college graduate Philip Cantwell, works on the part of households to stop getting Yellow Pages delivered.

Feeling that phone books are wasteful, harmful to the environment and sparsely used, Cantwell started YellowPagesGoesGreen.com where users can submit a request to opt out of getting a phone book. Twice a month, the company will mail out a request letters to the publishers alerting them to stop sending the telephone books.

YellowPagesGoesGreen, not surprisingly, has gotten some resistance from the industry with some refusing to honor the company’s requests.

“The immediate pushback is that the books are environmentally friendly since they use recyclable paper,” said Cantwell. “Even better is to stop producing millions of phone books every year that people throw in a draw or use as a booster seat for their child.”