No junk mail, please

(Leaving the planet as we found it - part of a series on good stewardship)

If you've ever tried your hand at making paper using recycled materials you'll know that it's great fun, but it involves quite a bit of water and energy. The same is true for commercially produced paper. And while most of us are trying to limit the amount of paper we waste at home and in the office, the amount of junk mail that gets delivered to homes keeps on increasing.

According to the Keep Australia Beautiful Campaign, the 8 billion catalogues delivered as junk mail each year make up 6% of all paper used in Australia, or 240,000 tonnes. Each tonne of paper takes many tonnes of wood, thousands of litres of water and the equivalent of hundreds of litres of heavy crude oil to produce. When the paper goes into landfill it produces greenhouse gases as it decomposes. So it makes sense to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive by:

• putting a "No junk mail" sticker on your mail box
• registering with the ADMA "Do not mail" service (to stop unsolicited addressed mail)
• looking for the electronic version of catalogues that you want to see, either on the website of the specific company, or at sites like Catalogue Central or Lasoo

This won't stop all junk mail, but it will reduce it considerably. Remember to recycle any junk mail that still arrives.

Photo credit: mikecogh / Foter.com / CC BY-SA