Junk mail and the environment
Discussion
During last year (2018) I decided to collect every piece of junk mail that came through my door and weigh it at the end of the year. When I say "junk mail" I don't mean mail addressed to me which we would traditionally class as junk mail such as my bank trying to sell me loans or credit cards or other stuff from companies I already deal with.
What I'm referring to are things like the dear home owner letters that go through every door in the town, the charity collection bags, the political flyers, the takeaway menus, the cards from the local gardner or traveling gypsey out to "clean" your gutters for 500 quid. That sort of thing.
From 1st of Jan to 31st December 2018 the total weight (excluding a few stolen from the bag I had them in and eaten by the puppy) amounted to five kilos. Five effing kilos!!!! If that is typical of the UK then that is a staggering about of utter crap. And that doesn't include the weekly local free paper that I didn't ask for.
Now, I'm not raging greeny type by any means but I'm not a big fan of wasting resources and this is surely a massive waste of resources. I have no idea how to calculate how much Co2 would be saved if this stuff were never delivered but, nationally, it must be huge.
What I'm referring to are things like the dear home owner letters that go through every door in the town, the charity collection bags, the political flyers, the takeaway menus, the cards from the local gardner or traveling gypsey out to "clean" your gutters for 500 quid. That sort of thing.
From 1st of Jan to 31st December 2018 the total weight (excluding a few stolen from the bag I had them in and eaten by the puppy) amounted to five kilos. Five effing kilos!!!! If that is typical of the UK then that is a staggering about of utter crap. And that doesn't include the weekly local free paper that I didn't ask for.
Now, I'm not raging greeny type by any means but I'm not a big fan of wasting resources and this is surely a massive waste of resources. I have no idea how to calculate how much Co2 would be saved if this stuff were never delivered but, nationally, it must be huge.
I don't think I'd have the storage space to do that so good on you. My wife seems to be on a list of women who receive clothing catalogues - about 5 a week. All glossy small format catalogues. Tearing off the address back cover and sticking them in the recycling is a job to stay on top of. We can't possibly spend the time getting taken off all their mailing lists - mostly you have to call them and there is not the time to do that. More new ones arrive all the time in any case.
3 arrived yesterday!
Coming back from a week away you have to clear them out of the way to get into the house. It must cost all these small companies an absolute fortune to produce and distribute this stuff. She never even opens them, let alone ordering from them.
3 arrived yesterday!
Coming back from a week away you have to clear them out of the way to get into the house. It must cost all these small companies an absolute fortune to produce and distribute this stuff. She never even opens them, let alone ordering from them.
richie99 said:
I don't think I'd have the storage space to do that so good on you. My wife seems to be on a list of women who receive clothing catalogues - about 5 a week. All glossy small format catalogues. Tearing off the address back cover and sticking them in the recycling is a job to stay on top of. We can't possibly spend the time getting taken off all their mailing lists - mostly you have to call them and there is not the time to do that. More new ones arrive all the time in any case.
3 arrived yesterday!
Coming back from a week away you have to clear them out of the way to get into the house. It must cost all these small companies an absolute fortune to produce and distribute this stuff. She never even opens them, let alone ordering from them.
I'd agree with around 5kg, perhaps a slight bit more.3 arrived yesterday!
Coming back from a week away you have to clear them out of the way to get into the house. It must cost all these small companies an absolute fortune to produce and distribute this stuff. She never even opens them, let alone ordering from them.
Soaked in WD40 they make good starting kindling for the annual tidy up of burning leaves, weeds and other organic material at our allotment. Saves on firelighters so a slight nett benefit, plus saves a tenner in firelighters.
Down and out said:
Postie gets paid for it, RM gets paid for it, not going anywhere for a while.
You can tell Royal Mail to stop to delivering junk mail to your address.You need to download this form from the royal mail website (pdf):
https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/D2D-...
Fill it in and send it to the address on the form.
Royal Mail will send you a copy of the form if you can’t print it yourself. You can phone, email, or write to them:
Royal Mail Door to Door opt out
Freepost ROYAL MAIL CUSTOMER SERVICES
Phone: 0345 266 0858
optout@royalmail.com
You'll stop getting unaddressed junk mail within 6 weeks.
The personally addressed clothes and shoes catalogues are generally because you have been a previous enquirer/customer so don't strictly fit into the category of junk mail as established by the OP...
It is a national problem.
But if I was a local/national business wanting to leaflet every house in my area/country it's probably quite a good way of doing it.
Are we saying businesses or charities etc can't promote themselves in this way?
Do we want to strangle the Royal Mail and leave the way open for much more expensive couriers or other adhoc non national coverage.
There is an opt out list you can go on at the local delivery office for the non addressed real junk.
It is a national problem.
But if I was a local/national business wanting to leaflet every house in my area/country it's probably quite a good way of doing it.
Are we saying businesses or charities etc can't promote themselves in this way?
Do we want to strangle the Royal Mail and leave the way open for much more expensive couriers or other adhoc non national coverage.
There is an opt out list you can go on at the local delivery office for the non addressed real junk.
Squirrel it away in the loft. Firstly it's a store of carbon. Stopping any biomass from releasing its carbon is a good thing. Secondly it'll contribute to insulating your house. At some stage it will cause your ceilings to collapse, but the cracks that appear should give you enough warning to get out before it lets go completely.
soad said:
Down and out said:
Postie gets paid for it, RM gets paid for it, not going anywhere for a while.
You can tell Royal Mail to stop to delivering junk mail to your address.You need to download this form from the royal mail website (pdf):
https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/D2D-...
Fill it in and send it to the address on the form.
Royal Mail will send you a copy of the form if you can’t print it yourself. You can phone, email, or write to them:
Royal Mail Door to Door opt out
Freepost ROYAL MAIL CUSTOMER SERVICES
Phone: 0345 266 0858
optout@royalmail.com
You'll stop getting unaddressed junk mail within 6 weeks.
Down and out said:
I don't want to take away income from my postie though, he's a nice chap.
There is the quandray, we don't want to kick the reasonable postie in the teeth who is just doing his job.Neither do we want a Rupert Murdoch, answerable to no one, corporate behemoth, type subscription postal service...
Want to send a birthday card to your Aunty Flo in the outer hebrides, or north wales or central london, fine that will be £127.85 sir.
Neither do we want to go and pick up our stuff from a hub after a long day at work.
I like the excitement of mail on the doormat, has he been, has he been? It's like xmas every day..
That last mile universal service we now enjoy is almost priceless.
Anything we get that has a return address on it gets marked RTS and put back in the post box. They soon take you off the list as it costs them for the return.
We do get plenty of takeaway menus which go straight in the recycling as we have a few already.
Charity bags annoy me no end. Costs me an absolute bleeding fortune... I've filled them with 7 wardrobes worth of clothes so far this year.
We do get plenty of takeaway menus which go straight in the recycling as we have a few already.
Charity bags annoy me no end. Costs me an absolute bleeding fortune... I've filled them with 7 wardrobes worth of clothes so far this year.
If you had done that exercise in the 90's you'd have been even more shocked.
Then, I worked as a Marketing Manager in one of the country's largest charities, responsible for promoting their mail-order gift business so was responsible for direct mail. We'd work on target response rates - the percentage of people that purchased something against the total items mailed. 1.5% was our break-even point on each campaign. We'd average around 3% - 4%. The highest we achieved was 12%. The lowest run campaigns were 100,000 items posted. Christmas catalogues would be over 1m items posted.
I used to collect other mailings to see who we were competing with and I reckon that 5kg would be what was mailed monthly back then. Probably more.
Thing is, it does work. Printing is the cheapest it's ever been - as is distribution. It doesn't take many pizza orders for the shop to cover their costs.
But you're right on the environmental impact; though providing you recycle it, it's not that bad. Most printing is done using vegetable oil based inks these days, waterless plates and other 'green' technology is also used.
Then, I worked as a Marketing Manager in one of the country's largest charities, responsible for promoting their mail-order gift business so was responsible for direct mail. We'd work on target response rates - the percentage of people that purchased something against the total items mailed. 1.5% was our break-even point on each campaign. We'd average around 3% - 4%. The highest we achieved was 12%. The lowest run campaigns were 100,000 items posted. Christmas catalogues would be over 1m items posted.
I used to collect other mailings to see who we were competing with and I reckon that 5kg would be what was mailed monthly back then. Probably more.
Thing is, it does work. Printing is the cheapest it's ever been - as is distribution. It doesn't take many pizza orders for the shop to cover their costs.
But you're right on the environmental impact; though providing you recycle it, it's not that bad. Most printing is done using vegetable oil based inks these days, waterless plates and other 'green' technology is also used.
I've noticed a marked change in the type of crap I receive through my letterbox since I moved from a town centre flat to one on a development with a high proportion of retirement apartments on it.
I used to receive dozens of takeaway menus every week. Now I receive a lot of crap from the local church group, many, many charity bags and a lot of those catalogues that you can buy garden ornaments, incontinence trousers and products for storing your remote controls in a one stop shop.
99% goes straight in the blue bin
I used to receive dozens of takeaway menus every week. Now I receive a lot of crap from the local church group, many, many charity bags and a lot of those catalogues that you can buy garden ornaments, incontinence trousers and products for storing your remote controls in a one stop shop.
99% goes straight in the blue bin
xjay1337 said:
I signed up a while ago to the Royal mail thing and barely get any junk post.... infact the only "junk" I get is the occasional local town Newsletter!
I signed up a couple of years back, but still get the 'dear home owner' crap, presumably as its not specifically addressed to me(??)There are at least two weekly local magazines, full of ads for yoga, one man band decorators etc. I don't even bother leafing through them anymore before they reach the recycling.
Office junk mail at work is even worse: countless trade magazines, still in shrink wrap, dumped. We tried calling the subscription phone numbers on pretty much all of them, but we still get maybe 30 publications/month. Oh, & TV licensing 'final reminders', even though we're an office address & have called them multiple times to explain. What a total waste....
peterperkins said:
There is an opt out list you can go on at the local delivery office for the non addressed real junk.
But you won't stop independent distributors. I've currently got about 50k leaflets ready to go out, probably about 75kg? And the guy who puts them out sticks another few with them, so one wee guy in one wee area in Glasgow is likely putting 300kg out every couple of months.
The DPD guy loves me when he delivers the boxes.
The activity is generating work for my business, the distributor, the courier, the printer, and whoever sells ink, paper and machines to them. And most of the paper will be recycled. I don't see the problem tbh.
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