Keep Queensland Beautiful encourage easy ways to stop Junk Mail.

Keep Queensland beautiful has been working to lead, challenge and inspire all Australians to strike for sustainable and litter free environment. One of the oldest campaign of this KQK is “No junk mail” that encourage Queenslanders to follow easy ways to reduce the distribution of this unsolicited mail.

How many resources are wasted to produce that unsolicited mail?

Globally, it is estimated that 100 million trees are harvested to produce junk mail each year. In Australia, Junk Mail constitutes a staggering 6 per cent of all paper used across the country representing 240,000 tonnes of paper a year. According to the Australian Catalog Association approximately 8 billions catalogs got delivered each year in Australia and only 20 per cent are read.

What the law says?

The Waste Reduction and Recycling Act 2011 (the Act) aims to ensure that advertising material is delivered responsibly and securely to persons willing to receive such material. The laws also aim to stop the material becoming waste or litter.

The Act introduces the following new obligations:

Unsolicited advertising materials must be delivered securely in a mail box, slot or other place provided at the property for mail or newspapers or placed under a door of the premises.
Unsolicited advertising material must not be delivered to premises that have a sign such as ‘no junk mail’, ‘Australia Post only’, or similar, displayed.
Delivery of advertising material must not cause accumulations of waste.

It is an offence not to comply with these obligations, and fines range from $440 to $11,000. Compliance action may be taken against a publisher, distributor or deliverer of advertising material or unsolicited advertising material who is involved in breaching the responsible delivery obligations.

What can I do?

1) Place a “No junk mail” sticker on your letterbox if you don’t wish to receive uncatalogued and other unaddressed mail items. The Australian postal delivery officers are instructed not to deliver unaddressed mail to letterboxes with the signage.

Our Keep Queensland Beautiful sticker is available in the following link:

http://www.keepqueenslandbeautiful.org.au/merchandise/no-junk-mail-sticker

In addition, Buying the KQB stickers will help us to gather fund to promote our campaign and spread the word to create a more sustainable communities.

2) Register on the

Association for Data-driven Marketing & Advertising's

(ADMA). 'If you are registered in ADMA, you will stop receiving Junk Mail from its member such as banks, insurance companies, publisher and charities.

3) Register for digital catalogs. In case that you wants to receive junk mail but don’t want your mailbox stuffed with things that your are not interested, get your catalog on digital format.

To reduce our impact on the environment we must identify and stop those practices that use natural, human and financial resources in an unsustainable manner. Unsolicited and intrusive advertising can be avoided following this easy steps that Keep Queensland Beautiful promote in its campaign “No junk mail”.