Last year the DMA developed a Recycle Please campaign asking direct marketers to include their blue bin logo on outgoing mail pieces, encouraging its recipients to recycle. A good effort put forth by the DMA. But what if they were to go beyond just encouraging the general public and develop a strategy to get all DM'ers to recycle internally?

Here's my proposal: devise a extension of the Recycle Please campaign asking all DM'ers themselves to install recycling programs within their building (like we did in November). For each company that does, the DMA would partner with Arbor Day Foundation to plant 100 trees (or whatever amount) in a national forest.

The DMA could showcase logos of all participating companies on their microsite and include numbers of the amount of trees planted to date, and the amount of trees saved through recycling. The DMA could have a splash on their home page with the tallied figures. And, if the numbers are strong enough, they could site how many trees were used for mailings in 2007 countered by how many were saved and planted.

DM’ers would be encouraged to join in because a) it’s coming from the authoritative DMA b) they don’t want to be singled out and c) for the honorable exposure/advertising.

The DMA could get the movement going by surveying to find out how many companies are already recycling and plant the trees retroactively.

Press coverage on this could be substantial. And at that point, who could say that we're not doing enough...