I live in a block of flats. Every mailbox has a sign saying "NO JUNK MAIL", yet the periodicals space next to our mailboxes receives enough for a small army. Furthermore, it blows all over the garden and down the street. I am fed up with having to pick it up. Everywhere I look I see this stuff littering the streets. Our road sometimes looks like somewhere in the Third World.

In some streets there is so much junk in the actual mailbox Australia Post cannot deliver the mail the box was designed for, unless they throw the soggy mess onto the ground. Some unoccupied houses have a decade of advertising material scattered in the garden.

Advertisers need to realise that very little of this material is being read and that they are contributing to a socially inequitable situation where the whole community is paying for someone to remove this rubbish that is foisted upon us. Many Body Corporates could decide to form a class action and sue the deliverers of junk mail to stop them from littering the properties they represent. But why should we have to do this when we elect a local authority to do things like this for us?

If you are a business that advertises this way, the name of your company on a piece of paper that litters the street could be working against you. The message to the public will be that you don't care about the trashing of our environment, the obscene waste of paper or the resultant wastes. We could decide to organise boycotts against your company if you persist.

I rang Brisbane City Council. They were not sure whether litter was really their legal responsibility (who else?). The Council does employ some litter inspectors, I am waiting with baited breath to know how many, what their powers are and how many major prosecutions they have launched. Obviously, if they need to actually see someone dropping the paper on the street (our private properties do not count), then they will never prosecute anyone.

Regards
Willy Bach

Good grief, lighten up. I guess everyone has their crusade, but mate, 'Cup half full' my friend, not empty.

IF junk mail is the worst of it, I want your life.

Dear Willy,

My husband will totally agree with you regarding junk mail. We live at the end of a quiet court and we do have a "No Junk Mail" sticker on our mail box. However our neighbours don't. So, on each windy day their mail ends up on our front lawn. And you're right - the accumulation of paper can be horrendous at times.

For Christmas my husband was going to buy all of the neighbours a "No Junk Mail" sticker, which he was going to give them. I managed to talk him out of it. He spoke to some of the neighbours about the problem of "junk Mail." Their answer was, "We like the bargains they
advertise, and the specials on offer." So they refused to put the stickers on their mail-boxes.

I told my husband, "I'll pick up the junk mail from our front lawn - don't worry about it." It's more important for me to avoid having problems with the neighbours. Hubby doesn't quite see it that way.
So every windy day I race out and pick up the neighbour's papers off our front lawn - before hubby has a chance to toss it back on their front lawns (which he's done a few times in the past - much to my
horror).

If Council's could do something about junk-mail it would be great - but I somehow think it would not be a priority item with them. I 've
suggested to hubby that "Perhaps we should build a fence around our front lawn." We currently have a beautifully landscaped front lawn -
which is hubby's pride and joy. So naturally he doesn't want a fence.
So it's a no win situation. Annoying, but no win!

You'll probably find that most of the junk mail is actually delivered by one company. If you call the head office of a company whose junk mail you receive, you'll be able to find out who distributes it. Then you can tell the to desist, and threaten to seek an injunction for trespass (on your mail box) if they continue.

This finally worked for me - I get at most 2 or 3 pieces of junk mail a week now, presumably distributed independently.

It might, or might not, have helped that I contrived to portray myself to them as a complete nutter whose possible retaliatory actions were totally unpredictable ;)

Doubtless they do not think it is 'junk'. Try 'No advertising material please' and, if they persist, then write a polite letter, then a firmer letter and then a threatening letter - and then take it to the media. Going to court is expensive.