“I can understand that supermarkets change their products frequently and have new stocks nearly every week and they need to keep their clientele up to date.

I understand that furniture, household, cars, bikes, boats and all things you can imagine are being introduced in the market and dealers need to advise the potential buyers of their new products and sale offers and so on, but are the leaflets, stuck in every hole in the wall or doors called letterbox still effective nowadays? I dare say that they are inapt.

I have 42 steps to my maisonette and therefore as I empty my letterbox I throw all that some might call `Junk Mail’ into the grey bag which I have for paper recycling instead of carrying then up the stairs to bring them down again.

Sometimes there is so much that they fall on the floor and it is not easy for me to bend down. When my back is playing up and I am made to pick this stuff up, I look at the shop who caused me this pain and put it on my blacklist, never to purchase anything from there! Fair is fair.

Although many get recycled it would be much healthier to the environment if they never came into being.

I am bewildered by the insensitivity of the distributors who push their material into the already overfilled letterbox. They are making it clear to thieves that there is no one in that house, let’s break in; there might be something worth taking!

Much of it will eventually fall and litter the streets! Please those who deliver such Promotional Mail, when you see that the mail is not picked up do not add to the already crowded junk!

I would like to be able to sue the company who sends this promotional stuff for littering but it is not something which we can do in Malta. (at least yet!)

I propose that maybe the Government can print a self-adhesive sticker which says NO PROMOTIONAL MAIL PLEASE so those who prefer not to receive this stuff are excluded from it by sticking it on their letterbox.

One can buy this, but the guy who delivers the stuff pretends that he or she did not see the sticker. Done by the Government it will carry some weight as a lawful request.

In this country of ours, culturally advanced we should not get things we do not want to be shunted in our letterboxes!

Nowadays businesses should have a web page where one can send a request to receive this promotional stuff in digital form. This will roughly cut down the use of paper by about 80%.

Better still are Apps on one’s Smart Phone where coupons could be activated if you go to the store as you walk through and all promotions could be entertained on your mobile. Same with smart watches but not yet, few have them.

The paper should be revered like the parchment was, or like water is now, not because there is anything magical in them but because there isn’t much of it around.

Beautiful are the cultural information leaflets, but again if my face is printed on such books I wouldn’t like me to be shredded or squashed and grained microscopically in recycling.

Digital Promotions are good enough to reach nearly every sector of the Maltese and those few who do not have the advantage from IT have the radio and TVs where they can hear for hours every day what to buy and what to use. Stop littering our letterboxes. Please and save our trees.”

Anthony Zammit,

Gozo.

Permalink: Stop littering our letterboxes – by Anthony Zammit