Please consider publishing this article about junkmail.

‘No Junk Mail’ stickers – they’re worth your weight By Kimberley Ross

What seems more harmful to you: The few flyers that arrive in your letterbox every day, or the email spam promising you a drug that can work miracles?

The reflexive answer for many people is email spam – after all, we tend to be much more wary of dangers that can be harmful to our pockets than other things.

Altogether email spam makes up an estimated 80% or more of all email in the world (2007 figure). Compound that with the often viral nature of email spamming and it is agreed we’ve got a complex problem that cannot be simply fixed.

In its basic physical form, junk mail seems far less menacing. The advertisers are usually local and familiar, and they do not attempt to hijack your computer and then your friends’. If you don’t want it, you can just chuck it out – or slap a sticker on your letterbox requesting not to receive it. Such stickers perform the same filtering function as ‘junk-email’ folders and email sender blocking options.

The problem is, even though physical junk mail has a redundant use to many of us, it doesn’t irritate us enough to take action about it.

Most of us will tweak our computers to be on high alert for any potential spam, but we’re often quite content to clear the junk mail from our letterboxes and dispose of it ourselves. After all, it’s easy enough.

As you casually sift through and discard a couple of flyers every day, you probably don’t consider how much paper these flyers add up to per year. But one Christchurch resident has. Ross Johnston s calculated that he received a grand total of 70kg of junk mail in 2006. This was a marked increase from the 51kg he collected in 1992.

Put it like this and your environmental alarm bells will almost certainly start ringing – suddenly junk mail doesn’t seem quite so harmless. And it’s not. Research conducted in the United States found that America’s junk mail created greenhouse gases equivalent to the amount that would be released by 2.4 million cars, idling 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Despite this, our approach to junk mail remains casual – indeed, apathetic.

A study conducted by the North Shore City Council a few years ago found that 50% of those surveyed viewed junk mail as being worthless, annoying, or both. Another 43% expressed the view that junk mail was only occasionally useful. Yet at the commencement of the survey, 77% of participants did not have a ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker on their letterbox. On completion of the survey however, 60% of participants said they would consider having one.

Unlike the difficulties with email spam, the solution to junk mail seems so straightforward that it is absurd the problem even exists. Most of us don’t want junk mail, and ‘No Junk Mail’ stickers have proven to be an effective obstruction, so why aren’t more of us using them?

Andrew Horton of Christchurch considered this puzzle too, and came up with a solution. In 2006 he began a not-for-profit campaign called ‘Letterboxer’. Its aim: to reduce junk mail by door knocking and offering to place ‘No Junk Mail’ stickers on occupants’ letterboxes then and there.

“It seemed like the easiest environmental problem to tackle because the solution is so simple,” says Horton. So far his intuition has been on the mark. The Letterboxer campaign results show that a third of people are willing to give up junk mail when offered a ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker.

Letterboxer’s website traces the progress of their success, by mapping streets that have been targeted and colour-coding how successful the campaign was on each street. Presently, Letterboxer’s ‘Greenest Street’ title is held by McDougal Ave in Merivale, with 79% of letterboxes sporting ‘No Junk Mail’ stickers. This alone equates to 2170kg of junk mail avoided per year.

A key factor that should make junk mail easier to do away with is the online availability of most pamphlets that contribute to Christchurch’s junk mail volume. For the proportion of people who find junk mail occasionally useful, there is an alternative, and Horton helpfully provides a list of links on the Letterboxer website.

Letterboxer is fortunate enough to be sponsored by local business Doubledot Media, an online media company that shares many of the same values as the Letterboxer campaign. Doubledot Media have created Zeadoo, an online platform for organising your online activity without all the advertising ‘junk’ that pollutes many web pages. If you are looking for a way to easily bookmark and sort the websites you frequent - perhaps including those online pamphlets you don’t want to miss out on – then Zeadoo provides a very ‘green’ way of doing it.

The bottom line is: Letterboxer has just about everything it needs to flourish – except enough volunteers to generate widespread success. The problem is clear, the solution is simple. Unnecessary, harmful waste should not be acceptable – and most people agree with this, they just need someone like a ‘letterboxer’ to help them take that step.

If you’ve taken the time to turn your email’s junk mail filter and spam alert on, you know it will be just as painless to place a ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker on your letterbox. Visit http://www.letterboxer.org.nz/ to request a free sticker or sign up to become a volunteer - it is worth your weight in paper.

ENDS

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