You can find a bright spot in the recession as close as your mailbox: There are far fewer hefty catalogs, bulging coupon packets, unwanted credit-card offers and glossy fliers clogging it up.

Thanks to the economic downturn and rising shipping costs, junk mail volume was down 16 percent in the nine months ending in June compared with the same period a year earlier, on pace for the steepest annual decline in decades.

Businesses that are still sending junk mail are sending less of it — shrinking their catalogs and using thinner paper to save money. It’s a sign stores are still struggling, but it also means less paper to toss in the garbage or lug to the recycling bin.

Williams-Sonoma Inc., parent company of mailbox mainstays Pottery Barn and West Elm, plans to cut in half the number of pages in its catalogs by 2011.

J. Crew Group Inc. cut its catalog circulation by 27 percent earlier this year. Crate&Barrel and the parent company of the Victoria’s Secret catalog are tweaking their mail strategy.

Fewer credit-card solicitations are going out, too. About 1.4 billion fewer were mailed last year than in 2007, a decline big enough to account for a quarter of the overall drop in junk mail.

The reprieve from overstuffed mailboxes probably will end as the economy revives. Catalogs, pamphlets and flyers remain among the cheapest and most effective ways to market and sell products and draw new shoppers into stores.

Among those hit hardest is the already-struggling U.S. Postal Service. Junk mail, which the post office calls standard mail, accounted for about a fourth of its revenue in 2008.

The postal service made $200 million less from junk mail last year than in 2007, and this year’s decline may be even bigger.

Before 2007, junk mail had climbed almost every year since 1971.