We are a 2 person household between me and my wife. I logged all of our received mail from our mailbox every day in a sheet then converted the data into a json node so I can use http://www.sankey-diagram-generator.acquireprocure.com/
to generate this diagram. I categorized each mail piece into broader
categories to be able to make this Sankey chart readable. I categorized
any unsolicited mail into Junk Mail. Only of 5 out of 425 mail pieces was
mail that could not have been sent in an email.

The government sends junk mail?

We should have Sankey limits. Like The first Monday of the month or something.

I live in the US. I used “Government” as a broad category to include Mail from the federal government in addition to the state and the city. The city sends junk Mail more often than not.

I get hiring pamphlets for USPS. ive never worked in shipping/postal.

Not sure how OP classified them, but I would classify all of the political mailers I get as Government and certainly as Junk.

Also junk mail from friends and family?? Are they caught in a MLM scheme or what?

That makes some sense

This is actually one of the better sankey diagrams I've seen. Nice and to te point, looks nice, and sums the outlier info up well.

OP, I'm just curious. What was the ones that were not junk mail & could not be sent by email? Whas it mail-in voting stuff?

Examples were voter registration cards, credit card replacements or a mailed check.

The “It can be sent in an email” was a stand out to me. Imagine how much money could be saved if it was sent to you via email instead of through post

I could have one of those diagrams for the past 5 years.

Letters: Council tax bill (paid automatically and electronically anyway). One every... three months I think.

And I got a Jehovah's Witness hand-written piece of indecipherable junk posted through my door today.

That's it.

The graph wouldn't be very illuminating.

What is “Postal Office mail”? The post office doesn’t address mail to you, they are just a service provider.

Hospital sends junk mail? “With every 10 chemo treatments get 1 free”

If you feel comfortable sharing, what were the mail items that couldn’t have been sent via email?

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Living in India the amount of junk mail people receive in the US is astonishing. I never get any junk mail and almost never get anything that couldn't just be an email. I wonder if its due to more efficiency or speed of US postal service.

Probably the ones marked "government"

Maybe not email, but would secure digital post count as well?

Is there such a thing in the US? The IRS specifically says they will never contact you digitally it will always come via USPS to prevent fraud

Huh, maybe there isn't, I'd have presumed there was. If the infrastructure isn't in place, it obviously can't be done.

It costs about 50 cents per mail piece in the US. It’s probably the cheapest marketing approach for a lot of companies.

i’m thinking how much paper