Stop Junk Mail started in 2004 as a local campaign in my home town Norwich. My idea was to promote letterbox stickers which say 'no' to commercial leaflets and either 'yes' or 'no' to free newspapers. Similar 'No/No' and 'No/Yes' stickers are popular in the Netherlands, where I've worked as a postman for quite a few years. In Holland, all people need to do to stop free newspapers and/or leaflets is put a freely available 'Nee/Nee' or 'Nee/Ja' sticker on their letterbox. After cheese, liquorice, William of Orange and total football it just seemed to make sense to try to also introduce the stickers in the UK.

At the time the campaign was supported by the local Green Party and aptly named 'Think Green'. The Norwich Greens have a reputation for going out door-knocking day in day out (which goes a long way to explaining why they're currently the second largest party on Norwich City Council) and the stickers quickly found their way to many a local letterbox. I've never been a great fan of knocking on people's doors myself - even when it's for a good cause I don't feel comfortable to with the cold calling aspect of it - so I decided to instead spend my time learning all there is to know about stopping unsolicited mail. When Think Green was dying a slow death in 2006 I set up this website.

In late 2006 / early 2007 there was suprisingly little information about stopping unwanted junk mail available. The usual advice was to sign up to the Mailing Preference Service. As the Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail explains, stopping junk mail is not that easy. How to go about stopping unsolicited mail depends on what type of junk mail you're dealing with (i.e. addressed or unaddressed), who delivered it, and whether or not you've (perhaps unknowingly) asked the sender to send you advertisements.

Stop Junk Mail has never been 'just' about providing information. Unavoidably, it's a campaign as well. Reducing junk mail could be a lot easier than it is at the moment, if only the 'direct mail' industry and/or politicians would be willing to give people easy and effective ways of taking control over what comes through the letterbox. This isn't happening at the moment. Within the industry there's plenty of talk about better targeting of junk mail (so that you only receive advertisements you're interested in) but making it easier for you to actual stop junk mail is not on the agenda. It is on mine, and I've listed various ideas for making it easier for people to reduce unsolicited mail in the Manifesto.

For a project that's self-funded and run in my spare time (sadly I do have plenty of bills to pay) I guess Stop Junk Mail has done alright. Over the years I've given (hopefully) useful information to many thousands of people and thanks to this website the 'direct marketing' industry no longer has a monopoly over what the general public is and isn't told about reducing unwanted mail.

I've managed to raise various issues that previously weren't discussed, such as the question whether or not the Direct Marketing Association can substantiate its claim that registering with the Mailing Preference Service will reduce by personally addressed advertising mail by 95% (a claim that has now been removed from the Mailing Preference Service website). And it was me who set up the first one-point-stop for opting out of junk mail and paper directories (junkbuster.org.uk) and who discovered that in 2008 less than 0.5% of UK households was registered with Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out at the time (after various media reported this Royal Mail decided to no longer be secretive about the figure).

The list of failures is much longer. I've lost track of the number of great ideas I've had for things that would really give Stop Junk Mail a boost; some projects were never even started, others never finished. After more than four years Stop Junk Mail shouldn't be a one-man-show anymore, yet I never managed to get more people involved in the project (even though there are plenty of genuine junk mail haters amongst you). The current (completely redesigned) website, which was launched in June 2011 and was in the planning for well over a year, aims to be a fresh start. I'm hoping to turn Stop Junk Mail into an unincorporated association, and there are a number of interesting projects I'm hoping to work on this year. To make this happen I'm actively looking for people who support Stop Junk Mail's cause and are happy to lend a hand. Do contact me if you're interested!