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The green door-to-door scheme has the potential to make a real difference and it will be interesting to see how many bulk mailers sign up to the scheme. Mailers still have the option to use the 'normal' door-to-door scheme, which includes no green requirements.
We haven't come across door-to-door items carrying the carbon neutral logo yet and so far Royal Mail has not publicised statistics on the take up of the new scheme. At present, it is therefore difficult to tell if the scheme does what it is supposed to do. However, it is positive that bulk mailers are now given the option to reduce the environmental impact of their mail-outs.
Two aspects that are really disappointing are that Royal Mail has not taken the opportunity to set a target for increasing the number of households opted out of the door-to-door scheme and that no effort is being made to make the door-to-door opt-out more customer-friendly.
Actively promoting opt-out schemes is part of the voluntary producer responsibility agreement. Since the DMA signed this agreement in 2003, the number of people registered with the Mailing Preference Service (the opt-out that will stop the bulk of addressed advertisements) has increased drastically to approximately 15 per cent of households. Royal Mail's door-to-door opt-out has never been promoted, and as a result less than 0.5 per cent of households are presently opted out of unaddressed items delivered by Royal Mail.
Compared with the Mailing Preference Service, the door-to-door opt-out also remains a very customer-unfriendly service. As we describe in our feature on 'Royal Junk Mail', there are various things that really should be done to improve the door-to-door service. Unfortunately, despite the introduction of a potentially good scheme, Royal Mail is still very reluctant to accept that it is pointless to deliver junk mail to people who are simply not interested in unsolicited mail.
By not addressing these important issues, appearances are against the green door-to-door scheme. It looks too much like a smoke-screen; a greenwash invented to ward off Government measures such as a junk mail opt-in. Making mail-outs carbon neutral can never be more than the second-best option. Ensuring that no advertisements are send to people who are not interested in them is a far simpler and more effective way of going green.