Stop Junk Mail

Junk mail is often a nuisance for the majority, with most of us simply destroying the item without reading it, and thus serving little or no purpose. In the UK it is estimated we receive 21 billion items weighing in at one million tonnes every year, about 18 for each household per week. Over 17 million trees and 4 billion kWh of energy are required to produce the paper, produce the mailing and transport it to our homes. Not only does this require energy and trees, it also each year;

• fills 2.3 million cubic metres in our landfill
• uses 31 billion litres of water
• burns 1.6 billion litres of oil
• emits 26m tonnes of airbourne pollutants

Preventing the majority of junk mail only takes a few minutes by simply excluding your address from the relevant mailing lists via the Mail Preference Service. The MPS is a free service set up 20 years ago and funded by the direct mail industry to enable consumers to have their names and home addresses in the UK removed from or added to lists used by the industry. It is actively supported by the Royal Mail and all directly involved trade associations and fully supported by The Information Commissioners Office.

The MPS can remove your name from up to 95% of Direct Mail lists. It will not stop mail that has been sent from overseas, un-addressed material or mail addressed to The Occupier. You can expect to continue to receive mailings from companies with whom you have done business in the past. You may also receive mailings from small, local companies.

To prevent un-addressed material, you should contact Royal Mail, who offer a similar services to that of the MPS.

Both services can take up to 4 months to become fully active, any unwanted mail that continues to arrive can be put back in the post box (no additional stamp needed) with a message written on it asking to be removed from that company’s mailing list.

You can help further by ensuring that any mail you do still receive is sorted and sent for recycling rather than just being placed into your main rubbish bin.