56,000 say no to junk mail in Warwickshire
More than 1,000 Warwickshire households per month have been saying a resounding `no’ to junk mail.
The last three months has seen more than 1,000 households per month signing up to stopping junk mail coming through their letterbox. This has pushed figures to an all time high with more than 56,000 households now signed up to the scheme.
And with 226,000 households in Warwickshire, this means that approaching a quarter of all of the county’s homes are committed to halting unwanted mail.
Warwickshire’s Waste Partnership teamed up with the Mail Preference Service to market everyone’s right not to receive unwanted Direct Mail through the letterbox.
According to the Post Office, the average adult in the UK receives 4kg of unwanted mail each year.
This means that in Warwickshire, if every household receives just one unwanted piece of Direct Mail a day that’s approximately 6 million pieces of wasted paper per month - around 90 per cent of all junk mail goes straight in the bin.
With the massive increase in landfill tax in the coming years, the cost of disposing of waste by Warwickshire County Council will escalate to £56 per tonne by 2011.
This means that if residents don’t recycle and just throw the 1,800 tonnes of junk mail rubbish into our waste bins, it will cost the County tax payers £101,248 per year to dispose of.
Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment and the Waste Partnership Chair, said: “This campaign is really making an impact. Unwanted, unread junk mail has no place in anyone’s home.
“If residents are not interested in receiving it, they can easily stop it, and it’s a free and effective way of getting rid of your unwanted junk mail, as well as supporting the reduction in waste within the County and helping to prevent unnecessary increases in Council taxes.”
The Mailing Preference Service can remove someone’s name from up to 95% of Direct Mail lists or have their name added to them – and as a result they should see a noticeable difference in the post they receive after a few months.
Residents can make a difference in the amount of rubbish generated within the county by registering with the Mailing Preference Service. If they would like to register now, they can write to “Mailing Preference Service, FREEPOST 29 (LON20771), London, W1E 0ZT” or simply go online to register through http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/wastewise or they can also register directly on-line via the MPS website, http://www.mpsonline.org.uk