Yesterday was my late day at work, which means I not only have to stay late, I go in later too (‘cuz, like, it’s a long enough day as it is). As an early riser (with little to no respect for those slackers who sleep late and don’t roll into the office until after nine o’clock – which pretty much sums up all the upper mucky-mucks out there), that means I dawdle and waste my hours of peak mental acuity (such as it is) sitting around waiting for it to get late enough to go to work only to hit a major wall at about three in the afternoon, when I stare blindly at me computer in what resembles a persistent vegetative state. All on the odd chance that some slacker mucky-muck will come looking for somebody late in the day. Because, like, I don’t have e-mail and an iPhone and a company-paid Internet connection, so how could they possible track me down? So, on these Wednesday mornings, to quote Satchel Paige, “sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

Yesterday morning, I was thinkin’. I glanced over at a pile of junk mail, and I had an epiphany for new legislation. My idea is to require that all junk mail be sent in reusable, resealable envelopes with erasable address/return address areas. If it’s stamped mail, the cancelled stamp must be easily removable, or, better yet, if it’s got a permit imprint, they have to pay for a second mailing. So if I get the 788th “offer” from AARP, I should be able to dump out and shred their unsolicited crap and insert my Town and County tax bill and use the envelope to mail it in.

Now I might give the junk mail senders a way to avoid this requirement – if they get people to explicitly opt-in to receiving junk mail from the sender, then they don’t need the reusable envelopes (they can get a special permit designation or special precanceled stamps or whatever). If they send you junk mail and don’t have a written opt-in form from you, then it’s a Federal offense with a huge fine.

Granted, there are some details that would need to be worked out (a strict definition of junk mail, for instance, plus the ability to opt-out at any time – kinda like the no-call list that Ann from card services seems to feel it’s OK to ignore). But I think it would not only save paper by increasing the cost of sending unsolicited crap mail that the consumer has to process (I mean, there’s the cost of a shredder, time spend shredding and recycling, paying somebody to pick up my recyclable or taking the time and expense of taking them to the dump myself, etc.), but it would foster innovation in the envelope and erasable ink industries (fields of endeavor far too long ignored in this country).

Then again, I could just burn all that junk mail for heat.