EDDM and Junk Mail Questions, Answered

EDDM is a U.S. Postal Service program that lets a business send one advertising flyer to every address on the carrier routes it picks, with no names and no mailing list. The flyers arrive addressed to “Postal Customer” or “Residential Customer.” USPS delivered nearly 3 billion of them in fiscal 2025 (USPS Postal Facts). Our page What is EDDM? explains how it works.

ECRWSS stands for Enhanced Carrier Route, Walk-Sequence Saturation. It means the mailer paid the saturation rate: pieces sorted in the order the carrier walks the route and sent to nearly every address on it. EDDM uses the marking, but so do other saturation mailers, such as coupon packs addressed to “Resident” at your street address.

PRSRT STD stands for Presorted Standard: the mailer sorted the pieces in advance and paid the discounted bulk price for advertising mail, the class once called Standard Mail and now USPS Marketing Mail. It appears on addressed and unaddressed advertising alike, so on its own it doesn't mean a piece is EDDM. EDDM pieces also carry ECRWSS, often with “EDDM RETAIL.”

“Postal Customer” is a USPS simplified address, allowed on mail that goes to every delivery on a route, so the sender never needs your name or street address. Mail addressed to “Current Resident” or “Occupant” is different: it carries your street address and comes from an address list, so it can often be stopped. Our page on Postal Customer mail sorts out every format.

Advertising mail sent to nearly every address on a carrier route, which earns some of the lowest postage prices USPS offers. To qualify, a mailing must reach at least 90% of the residential addresses or 75% of all addresses on each route. EDDM is one kind; USPS counted about 9.7 billion saturation pieces in fiscal 2025 (USPS Revenue, Pieces and Weight report).

USPS Marketing Mail, formerly called Standard Mail, is the postal class for advertising: catalogs, flyers, circulars and coupon packs, sent in bulk at lower prices than First-Class Mail. USPS delivered 56.8 billion pieces of it in fiscal 2025, 52% of all the mail it carried (USPS FY2025 results).

Since July 12, 2026, an EDDM Retail flyer costs 26 cents to mail, and commercial mailers entering EDDM at the destination post office pay from 25.9 cents (USPS Notice 123). That is about a third of the 82-cent Forever stamp. USPS earned about $617 million from EDDM in fiscal 2025 (USPS Postal Facts).

393 pieces of advertising mail a year, according to the USPS Household Mail Survey for fiscal 2025, down from 659 in 2015. Households headed by someone 65 or older got 529. The figures of 800-plus pieces and 41 pounds still quoted online come from reports more than 15 years old.

Addressed junk mail comes from lists: the credit bureaus (for prescreened offers), data brokers, retailers and charities you have dealt with, magazine subscriptions, and public records such as home sales. EDDM needs no list at all; it goes to every address on a route. Our guide to stopping junk mail covers the lists you can get off.

Not as a household. There is no registry, no USPS form and no carrier setting. The one exception works sender by sender: USPS tells EDDM advertisers to list any customer who asks to be removed in the “Do Not Deliver Address” column of the facing slip that goes to the post office with each mailing. Our guide How to stop EDDM mail has a request you can copy.

No. USPS rules require mail addressed to “Postal Customer” to go to every delivery on the route, and we found no procedure that lets a household ask its carrier or post office to skip it. The Do Not Deliver list belongs to each advertiser's mailing, so the request has to go to the advertiser.

Not in the United States. No USPS rule lets a carrier skip a mailbox because of a sign, and mail addressed to “Postal Customer” must go to every delivery on the route. Canada is different: Canada Post stops unaddressed advertising for households that ask.

You can write “Refused” on it, but nothing comes of it. USPS rules say refused mail with a simplified address like “Postal Customer” is disposed of as waste rather than returned, so the advertiser never learns you refused it.

No. All three work by removing your name from mailing lists, and EDDM uses no list. DMAchoice's own FAQ says its opt-out “will not work to stop EDDM mailings,” and PaperKarma says mail sent to every address in a ZIP Code has no list to take you off of.

In August 2012 the Direct Marketing Association launched a voluntary form for asking EDDM mailers to skip your address. It worked only with mailers that chose to use it, and by 2022 the form was gone. Articles from 2012 describing it still turn up in search results, but no such option exists today; DMAchoice, now run by the Association of National Advertisers, does not cover EDDM.

No. USPS has no general opt-out form, and the “USPS Direct Mail Opt-Out form” some websites describe does not exist. PS Form 1500 is real, but it is for ads you consider sexually provocative: it works one mailer at a time, requires the original mailpiece and protects only the people named on it. For EDDM, the only route is each advertiser's Do Not Deliver list.

Much of the mail addressed to you by name or street address: prescreened credit and insurance offers (OptOutPrescreen.com), catalogs (Catalog Choice), promotional mail from companies that use DMAchoice, coupon packs such as Valpak and Save, and the data brokers that sell mailing lists. None of these affect EDDM. Our guide to stopping junk mail covers each one.

Opt out of prescreened credit and insurance offers permanently at OptOutPrescreen.com (start online, then mail the signed form it sends you), register with DMAchoice ($8 online, good for 10 years), cancel catalogs one by one through Catalog Choice, and opt out of the major data brokers. EDDM mail addressed to “Postal Customer” is the exception: no household opt-out exists.

You can mark unopened mail addressed to you “Refused” and leave it for your carrier, but for most advertising that tells the sender nothing: USPS throws away undeliverable Marketing Mail unless the mailer paid for return or address-correction service. Refused First-Class Mail does go back to the sender. Refused EDDM mail is always discarded.

Yes. OptOutPrescreen.com and its phone line, 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688), are the official opt-out for prescreened credit and insurance offers, run by the major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis. It is free.

For many households, yes. Registration costs $8 online ($9 by mail) and lasts 10 years, and DMAchoice estimates an 80% drop in promotional mail from companies you don't do business with. It doesn't cover companies you have bought from or donated to in the past two years, companies that don't use DMAchoice, prescreened credit offers, political mail or EDDM, and it can take 90 days to work.

Go to OptOutPrescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688). It is free, and it keeps the major credit bureaus from putting you on the prescreened lists that card issuers and insurers buy: for five years if you opt out online, or permanently if you mail back the signed form it sends you.

Credit card and insurance offers based on information in your credit report. A lender sets criteria, a credit bureau supplies the names of people who meet them, and the lender mails those people “pre-approved” offers. OptOutPrescreen.com takes you off those lists.

Offers printed before your request can keep arriving for a while. The opt-out also covers only prescreened offers drawn from credit bureau lists, so offers from banks you already do business with, or from lists bought elsewhere, can continue.

No. Opting out of prescreened offers doesn't affect your credit score or your ability to apply for credit or insurance. It only stops the unsolicited offers.

Use Catalog Choice, a free service run by The Story of Stuff Project, to opt out of specific catalogs; it lists nearly 10,000 titles. DMAchoice's catalog category covers participating companies. For anything else, contact the retailer and ask to be removed from its mailing list and from any lists it rents or sells.

Use the address removal form at valpak.com/remove-address. Valpak says mailings can take up to several weeks to stop, because they are prepared in advance. Valpak mailings carry your street address, which is why they can be stopped when EDDM can't.

Use the “Manage Mailings and Data” page at www.save.com/manage, where Save takes requests to stop delivery of its mailer and to opt out of data sharing. Save says mailings can take up to six weeks to stop, because they are prepared in advance.

Use OptOutYP.com, the directory publishers' opt-out site (the old YellowPagesOptOut.com address forwards there), or contact the publisher named on the directory. Thryv, which publishes The Real Yellow Pages, lists 1-844-339-6334 for requests.

Write “Not at this address” on unopened mail for anyone who doesn't live with you and put it back out for your carrier. First-Class Mail then goes back to the sender. Advertising mail is usually thrown away instead, so for catalogs and offers that keep coming, contact the sender directly.

Register the person on the Deceased Do Not Contact list, linked from DMAchoice.org: relatives, friends and caregivers can register for a $6 fee, and the list's operator expects promotional mail to drop within three months. Also notify the credit bureaus, and contact the banks, card issuers and charities that keep writing.

Yes, if you are the executor or administrator of the estate. USPS requires you to file the change of address in person at a Post Office with documents showing that authority; a death certificate alone is not enough. Forwarding lasts 12 months, and USPS does not forward Marketing Mail.

No opt-out service covers it; DMAchoice, for one, exempts political mailings. Asking each campaign or party to remove you is the only direct route. Voting early may help in states where campaigns can see who has already voted.

About 2.3 billion pieces in 2024, according to Postal Regulatory Commission figures cited by Senators Joni Ernst and Catherine Cortez Masto. Their bill, S. 3260, introduced November 20, 2025, would repeal the reduced postage rate that qualified political committees can use.

Ask each charity to remove you and to stop renting, selling or trading your name; many have a form or a box to check. When you give, say you don't want your name shared. Charities can rent or trade donor lists, so one gift can bring appeals from groups you have never given to.

Yes. DMAchoice reaches only organizations that subscribe to it, and it doesn't cover groups you have donated to in the past two years. Contacting each charity directly works best, and appeals already printed may keep arriving for a while.

Data brokers collect and sell information about consumers, such as names, addresses, purchases and demographics, drawn from public records, surveys, warranty cards and shopping data. Marketers rent their lists to mail you offers, so opting out of the big brokers cuts junk mail at the source.

Use each broker's own opt-out process; large marketing-data companies such as Acxiom and Epsilon have them, as does LexisNexis. Epsilon, for example, takes requests at legal.epsilon.com/dsr or (866) 267-3861. Paid services such as DeleteMe or Incogni will file the requests for you, and our data broker opt-out guide has the steps for each major broker.

Partly. Services such as DeleteMe and Incogni send removal requests to data brokers for a subscription fee, which can reduce list-based mail over time. They can't stop EDDM, and they don't reach companies that already have your address from a purchase.

Some of it. In 2024, people reported 42,108 frauds that began with postal mail to the FTC, with $90 million in reported losses, across all ages (FTC Consumer Sentinel). Mail fraud schemes typically target people by name, so getting off mailing lists also cuts your exposure. The “$4.8 billion in elder fraud” sometimes tied to mail is an FBI figure for 2024 internet crime against people 60 and older.

Yes. Advertising mail is legal, and EDDM is an official USPS product, made permanent by a 2012 rule. Federal law targets deceptive mail, such as sweepstakes and mailings dressed up as government notices (the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act), but unlike commercial email under CAN-SPAM, postal advertising doesn't have to offer an opt-out. Prescreened credit offers are the exception: they must tell you how to opt out.

Phones got the National Do Not Call Registry from the Federal Trade Commission in 2003, and commercial email must offer an opt-out under the CAN-SPAM Act, but Congress has never created anything similar for mail. When at least 19 states considered Do Not Mail bills in 2007 and 2008, the mailing industry organized against them through a coalition called Mail Moves America, and none passed. Our page Is there a Do Not Mail registry? covers the history.

You own it, but federal law (18 U.S.C. 1725) bars anyone from putting mailable matter in it without paying postage, and the Supreme Court upheld that rule in 1981. USPS delivers whatever lawful mail is sent to your address, and no rule lets a household block advertising in general.

Yes. In 2007 and 2008, at least 19 state legislatures introduced Do Not Mail bills, and none became law (Congressional Research Service, 2008). Congress has never moved a federal Do Not Mail registry.

Yes. Canada Post stops unaddressed advertising for households that ask, and Royal Mail in the UK runs a free opt-out from its unaddressed Door to Door deliveries. In Germany a “no advertising” sticker legally binds distributors, France fines distributors up to 1,500 euros for ignoring a “Stop Pub” sticker, and the Netherlands uses opt-out stickers nationwide, with Amsterdam and dozens of other towns requiring an opt-in sticker. The United States has no household opt-out.

PaperKarma is a paid app ($24.99 a year or $59.99 for life, as of October 2026): you photograph a piece of junk mail and it sends an opt-out request to the sender. It reports more than 10 million requests sent and says it stops 90% or more of the junk mail addressed to you by name. It can't stop EDDM, and says so.

Yes, if you don't mind doing it yourself. OptOutPrescreen.com (credit and insurance offers), Catalog Choice (catalogs) and the Valpak and Save removal forms are free, and DMAchoice costs $8 for 10 years. Together they cover much of what an app does.

It depends on how much you want to do yourself. PaperKarma is a paid app that sends the requests for you; the free opt-outs above cover much of the same ground by hand. No app can stop EDDM, because there is no list to take you off.

No agency counts it. Our estimate from current data (about 2.03 million tons of advertising mail in fiscal 2025, per USPS, times Conservatree's 7.68 to 24 trees per ton of virgin paper) is roughly 16 to 49 million trees, a ceiling rather than a count. The widely quoted 100 million is a 2007 figure.

No current, primary estimate exists. The often-quoted 51.5 million metric tons comes from a 2008 advocacy report that put direct mail at 100 billion pieces a year, nearly twice today's volume, so it no longer describes it.

No reliable figure exists. The often-repeated 28 billion gallons first appeared in a 2007 San Francisco press release that gave no method, and we have found no current estimate.

39% of advertising mail is thrown away unread, according to the USPS Household Mail Survey for fiscal 2025. The often-quoted 44% “unopened” comes from a 2008 advocacy report, not the EPA. The EPA counted 3.67 million tons of advertising mail in the municipal waste stream in 2018, its latest data.

It helps, but it comes after the paper has been made, printed and trucked. The EPA ranks source reduction ahead of recycling, and its tables haven't estimated how much advertising mail is recycled for any year after 2005, when the rate was 35.8%.

We don't know of a reliable figure. The $320 million a year that circulates online has no published study behind it. Advertising mail is part of what local governments collect and process, but we haven't found a current estimate of what that share costs.

Three things: cut the addressed junk mail you can with free opt-outs, ask local EDDM advertisers to list your address as Do Not Deliver, and sign the petition asking USPS for a real EDDM opt-out. Contacting your members of Congress and sharing the petition help too.

On Change.org; the Sign the petition button on this page goes straight to it. Jake Waitzman started the petition in January 2020, and it asks the Postal Service to create an official way for households to opt out of EDDM.

Your U.S. representative and both of your senators, whom you can find at house.gov and senate.gov. Ask them to support a household opt-out from EDDM. Congress writes the laws the Postal Service operates under, and our legislative toolkit has a model bill their staff can use.

Because it lands on you either way: the average household got 393 pieces of advertising mail in fiscal 2025 and threw 39% away unread (USPS). Nationally that is about 2 million tons of mail a year. Much of it can be stopped; EDDM can't.