August 29, 2014

by Dafyd Martindale

Are you fed up with junk mail?

I am. And last year I bought a “No Junk Mail” sign to put on the mailbox.

The results have been so good that I only wish I could get the same thing for my PO box which continues to pour junk mail at me in a 9-to-1 ratio over real mail.

Frankly, junk mail has become a modern plague. An unnecessary one.

If I want to buy something – this week’s specials at the supermarket, a new appliance, whatever … the first thing I do is Google it.

This quickly gives me the information I’m looking for, indicative prices and often alternative suggestions which can be very helpful if I’m not familiar with something.

Then I go shopping locally to see if I can get what I want from one of the South Burnett’s shopkeepers.

If I can – and usually I can – I’ll buy it.

I don’t mind if it’s a bit more than Google’s lowest price plus freight because when I buy locally I know I’m also investing in keeping local businesses alive, along with local jobs.

And judging by the support many of our local businesses give to their communities in the form of sporting sponsorships and/or gifts to worthy local causes, buying locally is helping keep my community alive, too.

It’s also more convenient to get something I need now than wait a week or two for an online order to turn up in the mail.

But what I do not do is wade through an endless sea of junk mail catalogues on the chance I might see something I’d like to buy.

And these days, with most of the population on the Internet, I don’t think I’m alone in that view, either.

Junk mail catalogues are a hangover from another age when printed materials were the only way to get information.

At one time, information about new products was difficult to come by, so junk mail actually served a purpose.

But here in the second decade of the 21st century, we have all the information we could ever use at our fingertips.

It’s available to us through screens 24 hours a day; we only have to ask to find the answers to just about anything.

When I got tired of transferring a small pile of junk mail straight from my mailbox to my garbage bin on a near-daily basis, I bought my “No Junk Mail” sign and got some of my life back.

What’s more – and this is where the “plague” thoughts started occurring to me – I just about halved the amount of garbage I was tossing out.

How much space, I wonder, does junk mail occupy in our town landfills? How many forests does it kill and how much pollution does it generate as large companies continue to pour big dollars into something that just goes straight from the mailbox to the wheelie bin? Even the post office provides a handy bin near the postboxes to receive all the unwanted flyers.

A few years ago, several US cities had a similar thought bubble when they banned household distribution of phone directories.

They’d found that old phone directories were choking up their landfills so they brought in local bylaws that forbade directory producers from dropping off new phone books at every home.

Consumers could still ask for one if they wanted to – and the company would deliver it – but mass distribution was banned.

It started out in a few cities but the movement quickly spread.

According to an article in USA Today roughly half of the United States was expected to be free of White Pages phone books within a few years, and Yellow Pages were next on the hit list.

Unfortunately, local councils in Australia don’t have the power to institute a similar ban on junk mail, but perhaps our Federal Government could consider bringing one in?

It would be kinder to the planet. And, I think, kinder to all the rest of us, too.

In the meantime, try adding a “No Junk Mail” sign to your mailbox. I think you’ll enjoy the results.