Unsolicited mail   (Read 1562 times)

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of paper (and chemicals, dyes, inks used) that is wasted on the advertisements and junk-mail that is delivered to letter boxes everywhere.

In an average week, I will receive a full shopping bag full of ads. I am now getting a no-junk-mail sign for my letter box as this level of paper and resource wastage is, to me, unacceptable. It raises an interesting point, an irony or contradiction in legislation. SPAM (the mass-mailing of advertisements electronically to an arbitrary number of recipients) is illegal in many countries. The resources that e-mail spam wastes,  bandwidth (it is estimated that at any given time 30% of the entire available bandwidth on the internet is being taken by spam messages), is sustainable. The backbones that carry information via electrical signals will always be there, the space that it takes on internet post offices and end-user computers is quite easily found again by deleting the message yet for the 'time' it takes us to clear our inbox of these nuisances we have considered it more 'polluting' than the millions and millions of tonnes of landfill that unsolicited snail-mail takes.

Paper junk mail wastes paper, adds chemicals to waterways and literally is taking up space in dumps that are already nearing capacity. Unlike the few kilobytes of hard drive capacity that can easily be retrieved, a landfill will never be the same again. More than likely, the landfill will become another speedway for hot-heads to drive their fuel guzzling sprint cars and add to global warming.

This is my idea, I want to have people take notice of how much a bigger threat to the world paper junk mail is. I would like a politician somewhere to see this and ban advertisement drops from their council area. The internet is the greatest source of information that the human race has ever seen and it is only getting bigger. Companies should cease their mail drops and focus their energy into internet advertising.

Who would like to join me in removing ads from the letter box?



Please download one of the file formats below and send it to your local member to stop junk mail

Absolutely! I agree 100%. How about we send an email to our local councils?

I think this is a good idea, we should draft up a letter to send to councils regarding the subject. I will do some fact finding about how much wastage is happening. If you wanted to do the same and put the info you find here so we can get a letter together that anyone concerned can send to their local council.

I believe this is possible. There is a town in Tasmania that had plastic shopping bags banned with the same approach....

I concur.

It was just today I opened up my letterbox and 90% of what I received was completely irrelevant to me. In a time where the environment is in such a state, we cannot be tolerating such practices. How dare it be allowed that things I do not register to receive be put on my property?

a) we receive stuff that has no basis or relevance - its basically spam that is allowed
b) like you say, the environment suffers and unnecessary chemicals and paper are wasted and dumped somewhere
c) its illegal on the web when the only cost is a few seconds of time per email and few bytes of download - so why tolerate it in the world where the costs and impact on environment are so many times worse?

Great idea Rakuli!

Okay, I've done a bit of research and found out some interesting/scary facts.

Scary Facts

• In an average household, unsolicited mail is the largest component of household waste on any given year
• 44% of all Junk Mail is never looked at, a further 20% is used to ignite barbeques and fireplaces
• The resources and power used to create junk mail in Australia could power over a million cars
• About 100 million trees are pulped for the production of junk mail every year. It is not possible to assume that all of this pulp comes from plantations
• Even if you recylce the junk mail you receive, this will use more resources (to process and remove the inks, dyes and gloss coating). The recyled paper WILL NOT be used for junk mail, the junk mail is taked from fresh wood pulp so the resource wastage for unsolicited mail is not reduced

There is more and I will add that later because it is making me a little angry



Some things we can do immediately about this

• In Australia, anyone is able to contact the Distribution Standards Board (DSB) to be given a free "No Junk Mail" sticker to put on their letterbox. They can be contacted on 1800 676 136
• If you find that you are being delivered the same catalogues or flyers more than once, see dumps of or excessive advertising mail littering around, you can collect the supplier details and report this to the DSB on the phone number above or online @ http://www.catalogue.asn.au/distribution
• In Australia you can place your household on the Do Not Mail Register. This will stop that sneaky mail that comes in a postage-paid envelope with "The Householder" @ 22 example street.

Well, I'd rather they don't advertise at all, digital or real life. But, I guess you have a point.... digital uses less resources.

Thanks for the information Rakuli. It is maddening to know that advertisers, forcing their non-essential communication on everyone, don't even use recycled materials in their disposable mail. The only way to avoid being a part of this damaging practice, as has been said, is by actively blocking the mail- simply recycling it is not enough. And yet, blocking distribution at our end is not enough either- we need to actually stop production of the mail in the first place. Apart from writing to our local members, what else can we do?

I've drafted up a letter to our local members (see attached). Rakuli, I'd suggest referencing your sources in the letter for credibility. Kick it around and edit it, get as much feedback as you can on it. I thought we could either add our names and email addresses ( or real addresses) to the bottom as a petition, or as we are in different electorates, each email a separate copy.

I'm also posting this information on the SustainaBundy website- this group is working for a sustainable Bundaberg and will no doubt be able to contribute to the fight against junk mail. They also have contacts with Landcare and other environmental groups that might be interested in getting on board.

(For those who are interested, check out SustainaBundy at www.sustainabundy.org)

I put a piece of brown sticky tape on my Ned-Kelly-esque (in appearances and era of production) letterbox - with the big, bold black letters stating "No Junk Mail" on my mailbox at least 12 months ago, yet why is it I haven't even got enough room in my recycle wheelie bin to rid me of this mindless propaganda?! I'll tell you why:

Because pamphleteers (is that a word?) don't give a rats.

They are actually paid by the piece of paper delivered. At least, that's how it used to work when I was in the industry, many a moon ago...

I have an idea...
I'm going to ALLOW the solicitation of junk mail to my residence, in fact encourage it; by it having it's very own Inbox.

Right next to my mailbox, I will bolt an aluminium trash can (or rubbish bin if I'm not being a Yank) and put the label "Junk Mail" on it. Somehow I doubt it'll ever fill, nor should I expect many more unauthorised pieces of crap in my mailbox. If this idea were to take off, the advertisers directly would see the senseless spending is fruitless, and hopefully cut back until they stop. Humour aside (that's assuming at least one person found my post remotely comedic) Rakuli's idea is a great one.

Petition the Councils! Coles Bay is a perfect example of how the small idea of one person really CAN make a difference.

What a fantasic idea! Can you imagine if we could convince enough people to actually do this? A trash can on every mailbox would do many things.

1. Show the pamphleteers (Is the most politically correct thing I've heard so we'll run with that) how useless their current occupation is. It would put their job in a new light, who would want to be delivered a whole pile of trash and told to put one piece in each bin. It would be so much easier to put all of it in one bin. If they see that the pile of ads is just trash that should be binned immediately they would see that it should never be created in the first place.

2. People who walk around residential streets and find themselves with a piece of garbage (bottle, can, wrapper) never have anywhere to put it (unless it's bin night). With a trash can on every letterbox, they will always have somewhere to place this litter and "Do the right thing"

Of course, this is a little extreme and the best idea is to stop it at its source. You can't punish the deliverers for getting a bit of cash for their efforts -- unless they blatently ignore "No Junk Mail" signs as GolfTango says above.

As soon as I find the time to download and install Open Office, I will add shine_on's letter to councils as a Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format and Plain Text document for download. Then we can start to make this happen.


This is a great example. For those that haven't heard of this, the residents of Coles Bay in Tasmania started a movement and had plastic shopping bags completely banished from their town! A mammoth effort considering the large reliance that modern society has on the humble plastic bag.

Coles Bay -- Australia's First Plastic Bag free town

Scary facts about plastic bags

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