Living in a city is very different to living in a rural area. I am appalled at the volume of junk mail that comes through my letter box on a daily basis. The worst offenders seem to be Estate Agents. In Summertown alone there are 11 different agents, mostly nationwide chains. They all regularly distribute cards touting for business through local letter boxes. Then there are restaurants & take aways. There are also people offering local services or promoting events.........etc etc
Every time mail is pushed through my letter box I think someone is knocking at my door, so I rush from some part of the house to answer it. I suppose the exercise is good for me. But it is irritating when I am in the middle of doing something or on the top floor.
I don't read anything. It goes straight out of my door & into the re-cycling bin. I imagine that is what most people do. The fact that this goes to be recycled doesn't make it acceptable. A whole growth industry has developed to deal with this mountain of paper - over & over again. All of it is a waste of human, financial & natural resources.
Multiply Summertown by the amount of junk mail delivered every day to all the houses in big conurbations & the size of the problem becomes enormous. It is such a gross waste of precious resources. Is the paper & card made from sustainable forests? I doubt it. Even quick growing trees take years to grow to a viable size to be chopped down. We are mindlessly de-foresting the world, not just to make paper & card, but to provide grazing for cattle to feed the meat trade for example.
I have just ordered two signs from this website - http://www.stopjunkmail.org.
One is to stop all junk mail, the other is to stop cold calling. If we all did this the impact would be tremendous.
We wouldn't save the world, but we would save paper & make businesses think again about their promotional advertising. I've yet to see any research about how much business is actually generated by junk mail. I really can't believe that it is worth the cost, not just in financial terms.
Most appropriate comment, Val. Junk mail here in NY even comes with the mail/postman! Most from supermarkets indicating the latest 'big deals' or 'best buys' and this, in a country which is stuffed to the gills with every sort of consumerism available and where technological advance is probably the greatest in the world. Everyone has access online to the 'latest & greatest' and so have little need for any written media. I wrote a letter the other day ... a hand-written letter ... and my hand-writing has deteriorated since presumably, I have become so accustomed to hitting little half-inch square keys with two or three fingers! Email certainly saves paper, although I agree with your viewpoint above but the down side is that many might actually lose (if they ever had it in the first place!) the capacity to physically write properly & legibly, again.
ReplyDeletePT
Here too, the P.O. gets paid to deliver it! And it's inside any periodicals you subscribe to. If I had the time I would return everything to sender.
Delete