Day 9: reducing paper waste from marketing companies

Every single day I check the post box, there's a flyer in there, and more often than not a letter from Virgin trying to get me to switch to their services (how many times do I have to tell them we can't have it in our street?!). It drives me mad. I'm not condemning all paper-based marketing activities, I work in marketing and I know it can be a great way to get a message out. But there are some companies guilty of over-doing it, they're wasting paper and adding to landfill.

In this digital age there's so many other options to carry out cheap and effective marketing, most of it is more targeted too. For instance, Dominos flyer us every week, but the 'local' deals on the flyer are exactly the same as those on the app that knows my location and previous orders, and as the app is my preferred method of ordering, this medium is sufficient to give me more info, without the need for a tree to be cut down. 

Virgin should frankly know better. Every week they send me glossy A4 invitations all the time, sometimes to me personally, sometimes to the previous tenants, sometimes just to the 'homeowner'. I write on these letters - return to sender and remove me from mailing list' but it doesn't get me anywhere. I don't even understand the purpose, lets forget for a moment that I actually tried to have it installed but found it 'wasn't in my area yet', I have been living here for months, information they should surely know, so I clearly have made my decision on tv viewing and am not looking to swap mid-contract with another supplier? 

Inefficient marketing online is their business. But inefficient mountains of paper that I have to constantly recycle is another matter. 

I want to research the scale of impact of flyering, or the percentage of companies who use recycled paper for their materials, or even the impact of colour prints into our water system, but for now I've carried out three actions. 1. I've put a 'no commercial leaflets' sign on our mailbox, (you can order a sticker from here -StopJunkMail.org for £0.85) and 2. I've added our details on Royal Mail's Mail Preference Service. 3. I've registered on the DMAs Mail Preference Service. Let's wait and see what happens!