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Please keep us going
Stop Junk Mail is a self-funded, not-for-profit campaign group giving free and independent advice on how to stamp out junk mail. If you support our cause, or if we helped you stopping junk mail, why not make a small donation to keep us going? Any contribution helps and is much appreciated.
Get a letterbox sticker
Stop junk mail with a 'No Junk Mail' sign. Now with a free opt-out card to also stop leaflets delivered by Royal Mail.
Go to our stickers page.
About the Stop Junk Mail Campaign
The Stop Junk Mail Campaign started as a local campaign under the name 'Think Green' in Norwich in 2004. The campaign was set up by former postman Robert Rijkhoff, who is also the co-ordinator of Stop Junk Mail.
The current campaign was launched in January 2007. At the time surprisingly little information was available about reducing junk mail. Our main achievement so far is no doubt that opt-out schemes such as the door-to-door opt-out (which stops junk mail delivered by Royal Mail) are now much more widely known - and used.
Our mission
It is possible to stop junk mail completely, but doing so is unnecessarily complicated. As described in our Guide to stamping out junk mail, there are currently eight different things you need to do if you want to live junk mail free.
The reason why stopping junk mail is such a pain is that the Government so far allows the market to regulate itself. In recent years the Government has put some pressure on marketeers to do more to reduce waste caused by junk mail, but bulk mailers have so far failed to make opting out of junk mail as easy and effective as it could and should be.
As a result of self-regulation a myriad of completely separate and half-effective opt-out schemes has been set up in recent years. At the same time marketeers have introduced numerous commercial opt-out schemes which charge people to stop addressed junk mail from specific organisations and/or encourage people to opt in to receiving certain types of advertisements.
To make things worse, local Councils are still selling the edited version of the electoral register to bulk mailers for just a couple of pounds, despite calls from both the Information Commissioner and Local Government Association to treat voters' personal information with a bit more respect.
We believe stopping junk mail should be easy, effective and free. That this is possible is shown in many countries abroad, most notably in the Netherlands and Denmark. The Dutch, for instance, only need to do two simple things to stop junk mail. People register with a Mailing Preference Service to stop all (and not just some) addressed advertisements and use a readily and freely available 'no junk mail' sticker to stop unaddressed advertisements and/or free newspapers. Stopping junk mail really can be that easy.
The organisation
Stop Junk Mail is very much a grass roots campaign. All the work on the campaign is done in people's spare time and just because it's a worthy cause. That does mean that we do always need help. At the moment, we could do in particular with PHP coders and people who have a talent for dealing with the increasing number of media enquiries we get. If that sounds like you, please have a look at our Volunteers page for more details.
Being a not-for-profit organisation also means that we're always short of money. Any sale we make is celebrated and any donation gratefully received. Without your support we wouldn't be able to keep going.