Households are besieged by junk mail

Two pieces of junk mail a second were delivered to households last year, according to a report. People in Leicestershire were sent an estimated 59 million pieces of unsolicited mail – a figure revealed when the UK’s first junk mail league table was published.

The East Midlands came ninth in the table. Households in the region received an estimated 279 million items of unsolicited post over the 12 months, compared with 527 million items in the South East. The junk mail included some scam letters. Leicestershire County Council Trading Standards last year ran a campaign, Slam the Scam in the Can, for people to hand-in dodgy letters.

Councillor Ernie White, cabinet member for trading standards, said: ‘The one thing that absolutely staggered me was the total amount. There were buckets full of these things. ‘When we collected it all together, it was a staggering weight of paper. Most of it was of a high quality and very eye-catching. In one sense it is very depressing that so much ingenuity goes into them. The overall impression is it must pay, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much of it.’
The figures were produced by The REaD Group, a business which helps companies keep direct mailing lists up to date, for example by removing names of the deceased. The Government’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates 25 per cent of households paper waste consists of junk.