The radio this morning referred to North Shore City, Waitakere and Rodney looking for submissions on a by-law to reduce the amount of junk mail delivered in the city. The key problem being its effect upon landfill volume. Basically it becomes illegal to put junk mail in a letter box with a “No circulars” or like sign on it. Sounds like a good idea to reduce paper waste though I’m not sure how it’d be policed – there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to “opt-out” of unsolicited advertising. (Sure you can call the DMA (DMA Name Removal) and NZ Post (0800 804 307) to get name removal etc. but it’s not a simple process).
Earlier in the year North Shore ran a trial with “No Junk Mail” stickers to evaluate how much waste material they reduced. They claim that they produced a 70% reduction of waste paper equating to a saving of at least 30.6kg of waste paper a household a year, though the number of households in the survey was not large.
There’s an article here (‘NZ Herald – No junk mail’ stickers cut waste heavily) on it as well as the full report available here (Envision – NZ).
The DMA’s own opinion on the proposed legislation is here – DMA – Legislation Alert.
