BOSTON -- One thing you can count on next year is the piling on of junk mail.

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With the post office drowning in debt, they're encouraging more direct mail through incentives and discounts to companies. The unwanted mail isn't just a nuisance. It's costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Unwanted credit card offers, catalogs and phone books are some of the junk mail eating away local budgets.

In Massachusetts alone, every year 308,000 tons of junk mail is thrown in the trash. Only 35 percent is recycled.

"Unfortunately the post office is an enabler of costs being passed on to the local governments," said Scott Cassell of the Product Stewardship Institute.

The costs are huge, draining $20 million a year from city and town budgets.

"It's a cost of the disposal of those materials," said Cassell.

But the state is trying to help. It's paid for a pilot program, just in Brookline and Cambridge right now, to prevent consumers from getting so much mail they don't want in the first place.

Residents can log onto CatalogChoice.org to request being taken off mailing lists. And if they get a publication after opting out, they can register a complaint through Catalog Choice. They work with offending companies. So far thousands of those companies have signed on.

"Catalog Choice is able to track all of the opt-outs for the residents. So a municipality can know how many of their residents are opting out, how many of those opt-outs are honored, and how many aren't," said Cassell.

But not all unwanted mail can be eliminated. Fliers, post-cards and no-name mass mailings will still keep coming.

"In Cambridge, there is still about 2 million pounds of paper in the trash everywhere. That costs the city about $100,000 in disposable costs," said Randi Mail, of the Cambridge DPW.

That's why so many towns promote recycling. Each ton moved from trash to the recycling bin is a $65 savings.

"That's the challenge we face everyday: to make sure people have recycling bins, and understand what's accepted, and to take a little time to put it in the recycling bin, not the trash," said Mail.

Although the state has customized sites for Brookline and Cambridge, anyone can log on to CatalogChoice.org to opt-out of unwanted mail.