Clean and Green Box

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I am very pleased to live in this commy village. And this is one of the reasons. Marrickville Councils is distributing No Advertising Material with the message:

Dear Residents,

Australia engages in a common practice of using household letterbox distribution as an advertising medium. In fact, approximately, 10 billion catalogues, unaddressed flyers and leaflets were produced by retailers and distributed letterbox last year.

To reduce amount of paper that goes to waste each year and support litter prevention, Marrickville Councils has produced a ‘No Advertising Materials’ sticker you may like to place on your letterbox.

If you still receive mainstream bundled catalogues of advertising mail you don’t want, call Distribution Standard Board on 1800 676 136. They will take action for you if it relates to print material of a commercial nature.

To stop junk mail that is addressed to a ‘household resident’, register with Australian Direct Marketing Association on 9277 5400. This will reduce addressed and unsolicited mail from ADMA member companies and organisations.

Marrickville Councils thanks you for your support in helping to improve our community.

Minimun Waste Maximum Recovery

The sticker has been put up on the letterbox because we are too lazy to pick those catalogues and put them straight to recycle bin. They are sometimes useful for lining kitchen or cleaning cat’s poo but we are not going to drive to a shopping mall to get a dozen of $0.5 cheaper eggs.

Every household has ‘No Junk Mail’ sticker except Junk Mail Experiment by Michael Gormly. But it does not stop them sticking unwanted mails into our letterboxes. Now the voice of a local government would probably make it clear get out of our mail boxes even though we are convinced what actions will be made when we lodge a complaint.

However, it is clear that the Councils’ message targets at corporate retails and leaves room for small local business. I am more than happy to support a Thai home delivery or a hippie yoga school in the suburb.

It will take some time for these organisations to get into the new world called the Internet. There is no web address mentioned above not even the Councils itself. It makes me think how I miss a hypertext. I have to put their links for them.

4 thoughts on “Clean and Green Box”

  1. In a previous life in Canberra I worked in collaboration with the Distribution Standards Board regarding the delivery of junk mail (it was part of an ill-advised election commitment situation). The DSB take all complaints seriously about unwanted junk mail delivery. The two big catalogue printers (Salmat and PMP) don’t like it either – they’re not in the business of annoying people as annoyed people don’t buy their products.

    They do investigate these sorts of things so it can be worth making the complaint if delivery persists despite having a no junk mail sign.

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