6 November 2007 - Stop Junk Mail has started a petition calling on the Prime Minister to introduce an easy and effective system for opting out of junk mail.
At present, the only way to stop all unwanted advertisements is by using a combination of six different measures. According to Stop Junk Mail, this makes it unnecessarily difficult for people to reduce the amount of junk mail posted through the letterbox.
The campaign group would like to see the introduction of a system whereby people would only need to do two things to stop all junk mail:
The petition has been named Go Dutch because a similar scheme exists in the Netherlands. Robert Rijkhoff, co-ordinator of the Stop Junk Mail campaign and himself a Dutchman, commented: "The scheme that was introduced in Holland in the 90s has been a huge success. Not only has it made it convenient for people to stop junk mail, it has also made it easier for businesses to target those people who are interested in advertisements. And of course it has saved many trees from being turned into junk mail."
According to the former postman, the present system for opting out of receiving junk mail could be improved by a number of relatively small measures. "First of all, registering with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) should automatically opt you out of receiving advertisements delivered by the postman. There is no good reason why Royal Mail should have a separate opt-out scheme.
"A second improvement would be to make it possible for households and businesses to register with the MPS. At the moment only individuals are allowed to opt-out of receiving junk mail."
The Go Dutch petition can be signed at petitions.pm.gov.uk/go-dutch.