Solid waste bylaw targets junk mail | Te Waha Nui

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Hundreds of millions of kilograms of junk mail are delivered to households in New Zealand each year.

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A huge amount of the advertising mail is thrown away without a look, and even when it is recycled it?s all going to end up in the landfill eventually.

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Auckland Council is establishing one solid waste bylaw to replace the bylaws of the city?s seven former councils.

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Part of the plan is the new littering bylaw which says only official agencies can post unaddressed mail to letter boxes marked ?no circulars?, ?no junk mail?, and the like.

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Statistics New Zealand estimates households get more than 116,000,000kg of junk mail delivered each year.

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In 2006 a Christchurch man collected a 70kg, 1.71m stack of unaddressed mail, the majority being advertising from home improvement and electrical stores.

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Waitakere Refuse and Recycling Centre?s waste contract co-ordinator Jan Eckersley says junk mail gets stuffed into letter boxes already full of junk mail.

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?It drops out of letter boxes and is found lying on the street and it blocks drains.

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?The litter?s a big issue with junk mail, I think the last time we did a litter survey it comprised 16 per cent of litter items.?

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Operations leader at the Waitakere Refuse and Recycling Centre Laurie Blair says he sees a lot more people recycling junk mail.

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?I use myself as an example . . . I?ve got my recycle bin and I usually go straight from the mail box to the recycling bin.?

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But Eckersley says junk mail does not always get recycled.

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?Some people will just stuff their junk mail in their rubbish bag rather than recycling it and we?re trying to encourage people to recycle as much as possible.?

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According to Letterboxer, an anti-junk mail organisation, recycling is not a sustainable solution. Paper can only be recycled five to seven times before the wood fibres become too damaged.

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Sylvia Devlin, stakeholder relations manager at the Marketing Association, does not believe advertising mail has a negative environmental impact.

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?We believe it?s a bit of a red herring.?

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In the United States 5,600,000t of advertising material ends up in the country?s landfills each year.

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Devlin says the exact number of pieces of junk mail delivered in New Zealand each year is unavailable.

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?The numbers of catalogues and mailers have been increasing [in the past 10 years] but the size of them has generally been decreasing.

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?We do know the cost of delivery is around $80 million per year. Unaddressed mail is the largest marketing expense for most New Zealand retailers and it is because of its effectiveness.?

Source: http://www.tewahanui.info/twn/index.php/solid-waste-bylaw-targets-junk-mail/

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