Most senders understand there's no point in continuing to target you with advertisments and leave you alone. It's a waste of their time and money and it's not in their interest to keep annoying you. Some organisations may need a couple of returns though; dealing with returned junk mail is often not much of a priority for bulk mailers.

It's true that there are also irresponsible organisations that won't even bother looking at returned junk mail. Unfortunately, there's little you can do about this. It's not unlawful for an organisation to ignore items you return; only an 'official request' has to be respected (see Contact the sender). Returning junk mail to the sender is no more than a polite request.

That said, returning junk mail is a lot easier and less time-consuming than contacting individual bulk mailers. It's also a good antidote for junk mail frustration. And, if we all returned all junk mail we're not interested in junk mailers would very quickly become a lot more careful sending out junk mail in the first place…

Junk mailers don't have to pay for items returned to them directly. However, indirectly there's a cost. The more junk mail Royal Mail has to return to senders, the more expensive its bulk mail service becomes. In other words, if you return unwanted advertisement to the sender it's less likely that junk mailers get spectacular discounts from Royal Mail.

There's another cost for junk mailers; they need to spend resources on dealing with items that are returned to them. However, it can be argued that returning unwanted advertisements saves the industry money. By sending back unwanted junk mail you let them know that they're wasting time and money targeting you. If they respect your wishes and remove your details from mailing lists they'll save themselves money in the long run.

If your business (or any other type of organisation) is getting lots of junk mail your only option is to send it all back to the senders. Organisations can't register with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out, Your Choice, and the Mailing Preference Service, nor can they stop junk mail by sending data protection notices to individual junk mailers. No opt-out scheme for junk mail send to organisations exists; there's nothing in the self-regulatory framework set up by the junk mail industry that can help organisations prevent unwanted mail; and there's no legislation that can help.

If you're getting lots of addressed junk mail and you want to make sure the senders get your message you should consider buying return to sender labels. Incidentally, you can get them on this website :). A pad with 20 organic 'lick & stick' labels costs £1.25.

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Returning junk mail seems to be a popular pastime. Whenever an article about junk mail appears somewhere in the Web 2.0. sphere lots of people comment that they just send all their junk mail back to the offender, and there are tens of groups on social network sites that encourage people to send back junk mail. One such group is the Junk Mail Revenge Day Plot on Facebook. The 'plot' is simple; for maximum effect members of the group are encouraged to save up unwanted junk mail and to send it all back on the last day of the month. If enough people are willing to take parts in 'organised return to sender' initiatives like this we would soon have a lot less unsolicited mail. It seems though that few people are actually prepared to make the effort.

• Buy 'return to sender' labels (Sticker shop)
• Junk Mail Revenge Day Plot (Facebook)