Is there anybody who enjoys getting junk mail? There may be one or two people but must of us despise it and junk mail is destroying the planet. The direct marketing men, and ladies, claim consumers like junk mail. Not that they would ever refer to it as junk mail anyway. To them it is Marketing material to benefit consumers but then they would say that wouldn’t they. To you and me it is junk mail and we would be pleased to see the back of it.
No doubt if you were to ask consumers if they would be pleased to see offers that save them money they will say yes. If you ask them if they want to get piles of junk mail they will almost always say no. How you word the question is the deciding factor on answering the question of whether consumers like getting junk mail or not.
The problem doesn’t end when you put it in the bin, or the paper recycling box. Your local council has to deal with all that waste. We are paying the cost of disposal and we are also paying the cost in damage all this wasteful use of the planets resources causes.
Stop Junk Mail
It is not easy to avoid all this junk mail. You can register on several lists to say you do not wish to receive all this rubbish but that will only prevent some of the mailshots. There is a very interesting and useful website about the subject of junkmail at www.stopjunkmail.org.uk where you can find out where to register on some of the stop spam mail lists as well as sign a petition to make opting in to receive marketing material a requirement rather than having to opt-out as at present.
The marketing men don’t want us to stop receiving their rubbish because they find it does work and some people do respond to the offers received. It is a shame that they do as without those buyers we would soon see the trade stop overnight.
I have wondered if there is not a case for invoicing the marketing people who send their waste through my letterbox. It should be considered illegal dumping but so far no one seems to have pursued that line of thought.
You could try marking the envelope as ‘JUNK MAIL – RETURN TO SENDER’ and popping it back in a post box. I have no idea what the position is there for the post office. Whether they feel required to return it to the sender and maybe charge them for returning the mail I have no idea. Neither would I be surprised to discover that doing such a thing might be illegal as it always seems that the law is against the individual consumer and in favour of businesses who wish to take advantage of our ignorance and gullibility but it seems to me to be worth a try.
Are We Doomed To Receive Junk Mail Forever?
So we can winge all we like but for now it seems junk mail can fill up our mailboxes as well as the recycling plants. There seems to be little we can do about it. I do recommend the website mentioned above if you want to find out more about the problems of junk mail and what you can do to try to reduce the quantity you receive but there seems little sign of anything changing much soon. Maybe putting the junk mail of your open fire or log burner is the only way to gain some benefit from all the rubbish we get thanks to the efforts of the spam merchants, sorry, I meant direct marketers, of course.
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