'No junk mail' stickers cut waste heavily

Using "no junk mail" stickers has brought a 70 per cent cut in unwanted material in the letterboxes of North Shore households taking part in a study.

The North Shore City Council commissioned the study, using 181 households, to see if the stickers could help reduce an enormous amount of wastepaper.

Survey leader Sarah Roberts, of Envision NZ, said the 70 per cent reduction equated to a saving of at least 30.6kg of waste paper a household a year.

Half the group used a "no junk mail" sticker during the trial period. Before the trial, only a quarter of the 180 households used some type of "no junk mail" sticker.

Three-quarters of those in the survey felt they received too much junk mail.

But 2 per cent said they read all the material delivered and 7 per cent said it was useful.

Most considered junk mail to be non-addressed advertising and real estate material which they said they did not want.

They were concerned at the enormous quantity of waste paper and wasted resources generated.

About 11 per cent of people surveyed felt that the sticker did not work because it was ignored by the people who delivered real estate materials.

And they were still getting items inserted with other publications.

Major sources of junk mail were identified as real estate, retail and supermarket material.

Ms Roberts said a follow-up survey showed about 60 per cent of homes in the study would keep using a sticker or considered getting one.

"If 60 per cent of all North Shore households used a sticker, a total of 1342 tonnes of junk mail/waste paper [citywide] could be avoided every year."

Council environment committee chairman Tony Barker said it would soon consider a study recommendation to make the stickers more readily available.

"It's suggested that the council give them out and I have no issue with that."

* The study report can be found at the website below and will take 55 pages to print out.