Spartan Profiles: Sander DeVries
LOSE YOUR JUNK MAIL
If you are an average American, you receive 41 pounds of junk mail per year. So says a new service, 41pounds.org, which wants to help. For a one-time fee of $41, the service promises to eliminate up to 95 percent of your junk mail for the next five years. “Half of the money will go to a charity of your choice,” says Sander DeVries, ’05, who co-founded the Ferndale, MI-based service with two brothers.
A native of Shelby Township, DeVries was an English major at MSU—which he calls “a fantastic four years of my life.”
After MSU, he worked in sales for his brothers’ computer networking company. “One day, we were at my brother’s house and he had all this junk mail piled up, mail that he didn’t open,” he recalls. “So we began to figure out how we could stop it.”
They worked on it and eventually found a system that involved contacting 30 of the nation’s biggest direct marketers and bulk mailers. “We sent an email to our friends explaining to them how to do it,” says Sander. “But no one followed up. It was a time-consuming process and it involved signatures. So we said, ‘OK, we’ll do it for them.’”
And so, in June, they launched their company—a mail version of the “Do Not Call” service to restrain telemarketing. “Since then we’ve saved 850 trees and more than 200,000 gallons of water,” says Sander. “We’ve prevented more than 150,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the air.”
Because the company donates half its profits to charity, mostly environmental nonprofits and school groups, says Sander, many in the community have volunteered to help with fundraising efforts. “Most people tell us this is a great idea,” says Sander, who recently got 200 new clients after a plug from a local television station. “We’re a good option for all those who want to get rid of all this waste.”
