Do you dread coming back from holiday and fighting your way through the mountain of junk mail that has built up on your doormat in your absence? The takeaway menus, credit card offers, letters from estate agents ingratiating themselves with fawning introductions, flimsy catalogues flogging leisurewear, even flyers for African clairvoyants.
Brace yourself: your post-holiday junk-mail mountain is likely to be even bigger this year, now Royal Mail is lifting the cap on the amount of “unaddressed mail” it delivers. A deal struck last month with the Communication Workers Union means postmen will carry heavier sacks in return for a pay rise, and the extra mail they will be carrying will be “unsolicited”: junk mail to you and me.
Delivering unsolicited mail is a fast-growing, highly profitable business: to Royal Mail, it is a veritable cash cow, far more lucrative than delivering ordinary first-class post. Last year, Door to Door, its commercial arm, delivered 3.3 billion items (12.1% more than the year before), even with a self-imposed limit of no more than three items per house per week. The new pay deal means self-regulation is over: the floodgates have opened and householders should prepare for a junk deluge.
And Royal Mail isn’t the only culprit. Direct-marketing companies have long hired delivery companies to carry out household mail drops, which generate £25 billion of business each year. And then there are the often more amateurish efforts: handwritten, often misspelled flyers from the likes of local political candidates, plumbers, baby-sitters and window-cleaners.
It amounts to more than 62,000 tons a year, reveals research carried out by life assistance company CPP. Each individual, it estimates, receives 617 unsolicited letters a year; 37,000 items in a lifetime.
All in all, nearly 4 billion pieces of direct mail are posted through Britain’s letter boxes every year, and a third of it goes straight into the bin. The problem is exacerbated by unsolicited mail that keeps coming for previous householders.
If most of us throw it away as soon as it comes through the letter box, why do companies bother sending it? Because your junk mail may be someone else’s opportunity of a lifetime. The direct-marketing business (including telesales and unsolicited e-mails) grew by 13% in 2005, says Alex Walsh, head of postal services at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Banks and financial institutions are the biggest spenders in an industry estimated to be worth £17 billion.
The problem is not as trivial as it might initially seem. Piles of junk mail littering the hallways of a communal block of flats, for instance, can be very off-putting to potential buyers.
“People take a guess at how many people live in the block — say, 30 — and then post 40 through the door,” says David Hewett, executive secretary of the Association of Residential Managing Agents.
“By the end of the week, you can end up with literally hundreds of leaflets for the same Indian takeaway. If I walked into a building and saw a totally unkempt pile of junk mail and freebie newspapers, it would put me off. It could definitely affect someone thinking about buying.”
There is also the detrimental effect on the environment. Defra says junk mail was a contributing factor in the 2.9m ton increase in household waste — from 22.5m tons to 25.4m tons — produced in Britain between 1997 and 2004. Much of it is destined to end up in landfill sites. And a group called the Bereavement Register has even calculated that the dead receive, on average, 100 pieces of junk mail a year — the arrival of which can be deeply distressing to the recently bereaved.
It is time to fight back — but what can you do? First off, contact your local council’s recycling department for a “No Junk Mail” sticker. More and more councils are helping residents take pre-emptive action, for you don’t want to end up in the same straits as Andy Tierney, of Hinckley, Leicestershire. He was issued with a £50 fixed penalty notice by his local council after putting two items of addressed junk mail into a litter bin rather than a recycling collection.
Yanka Gavin, a London homeowner frustrated at spending her mornings readdressing letters “return to sender” and “not known at this address”, called up Wandsworth council to get a sticker for her front door. Since she put it up, she estimates the volume of junk mail has been reduced by 99%.
Gavin, a retired publishing editor, who lives in one of six flats in a Victorian conversion, says “millions of flyers” had come through the communal letter box since she moved there five years ago.
“It was a bother, and it was also untidy,” says Gavin, 70, who filled three orange recycling bags a week with unwanted post and leaflets. “We still get the odd one through the door, and free glossy magazines.”
While government and internet service providers have joined forces to tackle the problem of spam, the online equivalent of junk mail, there is no such strategy to deal with the paper stuff, although politicians suffer as much as the rest of us.
Richard Benyon, Conservative MP for Newbury, has described the avalanche of junk mail he receives at Westminster, his constituency office and his family home in Berkshire, as a “carpet bombing”.
He is particularly irritated by unsolicited mail from charities, which send what he describes as “aren’t we clever” publications: “The huge cost should be spent on what the charity does, not slapping itself on the back.”
What he could do for starters, says the National Consumer Council, is sign up to the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), a free, non-profit service that allows you to have your name removed from, or added to, most mailing lists in the country.
The service is funded by the DMA. It launched in 1983 and, although its profile is low, it is surprisingly effective. It will block out almost all unsolicited and junk mail, although as Royal Mail is legally obliged to deliver anything personally addressed, it can’t stop everything. You can register your current and previous home addresses with it, as well as the names of previous occupants. MPS estimates it can reduce your unsolicited mail by 95%.
You also have legal rights. Under the Data Protection Act, you may request that your details are not sold or traded by a company to any other organisation. So call your credit card company and ask them to mark your account “Do not sell or trade my name to another company.” Do the same with warranty and loyalty cards.
If you are not sure how your personal details are leaking out, set a trap. Select a false middle name, initial, or misspell your address when you sign up for a charity, join a loyalty scheme or order from a catalogue. Keep a note of what you have changed and with whom, and wait for the junk mail to start. This can be very revealing. Once you have identified the culprit distributing your details, call it directly and again ask for your personal details to be removed.
But what about the notes from au pairs, local pizza chains and political parties, especially those printed in fake handwriting. Identify those causing the most problems, contact their head office or the individual concerned and tell them to stop — or you’ll never order a pizza from them again.
The diligence you need to employ when disposing of junk mail isn’t just to avoid a potential council fine. Identity theft is on the rise. More than 140,000 people fall victim to it each year — 13% of whom lost their details due to stolen or recovered mail. Unsolicited mail with your name and address — or your failure to notify banks, utility companies, catalogue companies and the DVLA of a change of address, so mail still gets delivered to your old home and binned — is all someone may need to create a whole new you. They can potentially tap into your bank account or run up debts without you knowing a thing about it.
Don’t just bin it, shred it. Personal paper shredders cost from £14.99 from Ryman (0800 801 901, www.ryman.co.uk), or try Snopake’s Swordfish range, from £60 (020 8991 1666, www.snopake.co.uk), which can shred credit cards. “Confetti” produced from documents can’t be pieced back together. And it’s great for compost.
Mailing Preference Service, 0845 703 4599, www.mpsonline.org.uk
