PP9: Junk the junk mail

A UK study in 2006 concluded that 550,000 tonnes of paper go into producing 21 billion individual items of junk mail each year. Junk mail, or direct marketing as the profession likes to call, is a complete waste of resources. Not only this but each year £70m worth of junk mail is delivered to the wrong address, two thirds of the public are said to object to it and complaints against it are skyrocketing. Such a chronic waste of paper and the carbon produced in its delivery surely cannot be justified on something so unwelcome. Worse, much of it actually comes from overseas with South Africa, the Philippines and Barbados being three of the larger sources.

There currently exists an ‘opt-out’ service which is said to effectively reduce the junk mail you receive by 95%. It is free to register with them and I advise you all to do so. This scheme is purposely under promoted because the industry body, known as the Direct Marketing Association, have quite predictably fought tooth and nail to prevent its wide scale adoption. To hell with the DMA, their industry is a wasteful and unwanted one and the government shouldn’t be afraid to confront them.

Yet I still don’t think this goes far enough. Just because an industry supports many small marketing firms and provides a massive boost to the Post Office doesn’t necessarily mean that it is worth keeping. I propose an ‘opt-in’ system whereby it is illegal to distribute unsolicited mail to homes unless they have volunteered for the dubious honour.

Once again this is a cheap and nasty policy designed to prevent one of the world’s smaller environmental catastrophes and won’t by itself solve very much. Yet I feel it is one of the many thousand small steps required to get us further to towards sustainability. If it could also be pushed through Brussels then we could eradicate it through Europe – which would be putting the tyrannical power of Brussels to some good use I feel.