Delete spam the old-fashioned way
Last week I wrote about making your bills paperless, but the biggest source of mailbox waste is probably junk mail. I used to fish mine out of the letterbox every day, and drop it in the recycling bin before going inside. My recycling bin was full of catalogs and flyers, which seemed a bit stupid since I’d never asked for them in the first place.
According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, “Australians receive on average 7 billion unaddressed flyers, leaflets and catalogues in their letterboxes every year. If your household said no to junk mail that could save almost 1000 pieces of unwanted junk each year!” Here’s a few ideas to reduce the junk mail you get:
Put a ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker on your letterbox
I got one for free from the Australian Conservation Foundation as part of their Act Now On Climate Change kit, but it doesn’t seem to be one of the current goodies in the bag. However, you can get them in all styles from hardware stores. You’ll probably find that a few persistent junk mailers will continue to leave stuff in your mail box, but I’ve found that a quick email to the business explaining what the sticker means should make them stop.
Use the ADMA’s Do Not Mail service
The ADMA has a free Do Not Mail service, which will remove you from the mailing list of many direct marketers. If you don’t get a reduction after 30 days you can lodge a complaint.
Of course, there are still some bits of junk that will get through, usually from companies you’ve done business with. Before you recycle it…
Reuse it
- as a bin liner if you’ve given up plastic bags
- in your compost; shred it and chuck it in, but don’t add too much
- as art for your home
- as a huge art installation, if you’re up for it
Naturally, the one company I wish would ignore the No Junk Mail sticker always obeys it, so I never get Ikea catalogues anymore! However, they’ve got theirs online, and I can pick one up from their shop, so that should sort me out. Most shops and businesses have email lists now so you’ll still be able to keep up to date on their latest products and specials if you’re a frequent customer, only now without the wasteful paper.
Tags: junk mail
April 8th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Free stickers are available from http://stopjunkmail.itsdamp.com.
Nice blog!
April 8th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Lots of local councils also supply no junk mail stickers too - it’s worth checking to see if you can pick one up from them. We live in an apartment block, so I always stick one on if one of the apartments is vacant, so save junk mail from building up and spilling out everywhere (and I hope that the new neighbours leave it on when they move in!) I’ve put them on empty houses’ letterboxes around the place too - again, it saves paper and you hope that once new people move in they might leave it on
April 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
That’s a good idea, and very neighborly too! I might do that for a few empty houses on my street that are getting a build-up.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
We don’t have a sticker but we hardly get any junk mail, even the local community papers haven’t been delivered for the last few months, which is a bit annoying because I actually love to read them from front to back…
The few flyers which drop in are the A5 leaflets with stupid photos of real estate agents which I dump immediately in the recycle bin.
What is worse are those real estate agents on a piece of magnet… which I don’t throw away and they end up in the cupboard … what to do with these???? I am totally not interested in those ugly magnets!
It probably depends in what area you are in. Haven’t seen the IKEA catalogue in ages… Probably our suburb is on the list of No junkmail…
April 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Real estate guys always think that *their* spam isn’t junk, it’s highly valuable information! I wonder if there’s a way to cover up the real estate part of the magnet so you can actually use it?
April 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I have a no junk mail sticker, but since I put it on I don’t get the local paper, which I want. I don’t think of it as junk mail, but the deliverer obviously does. And I still get all the real estate junk!
My mum told me that ad companys don’t print any less because they don’t know how many houses will have no junk mail stickers. The person who delivers them just has to bin (hopefully recycle) what’s left when they’ve finished. My pessimistic side agrees with her, but I still have my sticker.
When real estate ads have a calendar I cut off the pic of the person and stick it on my fridge. One year the real estate calendar had a really nice picture of frogs and insects. But this year I got a greenpeace fridge calendar so now I’ve got two, but there’s lots of space on my fridge.
And since Ikea moved to their new location that used to be a swamp I hate them and I’m glad i don’t get their catalogue (altho I’m going to have to drop off my batteries for recycling there cause I don’t anywhere else that recycles batteries).
April 11th, 2008 at 2:31 am
The stickers from http://stopjunkmail.itsdamp.com read ‘No Commercial Leaflets’ rather than ‘No Junk Mail’. This prevents for example Estate Agents can say their leaflets are ‘highly valuable information’ rather than junk.
The stickers also give you the option to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to free local newspapers.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I actually like getting junk mail once I had a yard to garden in and started composting. I don’t have ready access to grass clippings for my compost bin so add shredded junk mail to act as the “browns” for my compost bin. I use free junkmail newspapers as weed barrier in my flower garden. I put a layer of mulch on top of a couple of sheets of newspaper and have a fairly weed-free garden in the summer. As an added bonus the newspaper will eventually break down and enrich the soil (a bit) unlike conventional weed barrier.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Yeah, once you’ve got a compost bin, there’s always a way to reuse waste paper and scraps - they’re so handy. I like the weed barrier idea, I hadn’t thought of that before!