One of the many negative effects of self-regulation by the junk mail industry is that junk mail campaigners are to a large extend dependent on the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). In particular local Councils will find it difficult to run a 'stop junk mail' campaign without the co-operation of the representative of British junk mailers.

Why? Because more than other campaigners local Councils need the help of the DMA. Any self-respecting local authority will want to measure the effect a 'stop junk mail' campaign has sorted, if only to avoid an attack from the Taxpayer's Alliance. In order to measure the effect of a campaign, Councils need to be able to compare the number of opt-outs in a certain area before and after the campaign. The data needed to make that comparison is held by the junk mailers united in the DMA. To get it you better be kind.

Or, take what the DMA calls 'third party registrations'. If a Council wants to organise road shows and other events at which people can sign up to opt-out services they need the DMA / MPS to accept such registrations. And they're not always willing to do so. The DMA's policy on 'third party registrations' is rather mysterious. For no obvious reason 'third party registrations' are sometimes accepted, sometimes treated as 'requests for information', and sometimes completely ignored.

When I launched the Junk Buster widget (which allows you to contact up to six different opt-out schemes in one go) I found myself in the latter category. The DMA threw a wobbler and showed its authoritarian side. The information in Stop Junk Mail's Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail, they said, was ambiguous and it would therefore be inappropriate for the DMA to be contacted via Junk Buster. And anyway, as a rule the MPS does not accept third party registrations.

The argument was always a complete non-starter as people can only use Junk Buster to request an information pack and opt-out form for the opt-out services run by the DMA (the MPS and Your Choice). In the lengthy discussion that followed after I found out about the DMA's refusal to co-operate it also became clear that the DMA could not mention a single of example of ambiguous information. And as soon as I asked them if they would be so kind as to send me a copy of the rules surrounding the MPS (and the policy on 'third party registrations') they went into hiding. I have heard no word from the representative of junk mailers since.

My experience with the DMA thus leads me to two conclusions:

1. The DMA / MPS makes up the rules as they go along and can't be held to account.
2. The DMA / MPS can refuse any co-operation with a 'stop junk mail' campaign purely on the basis that they don't like the campaign.

In other words, the DMA / MPS claims to have a monopoly on information about reducing junk mail. If your campaign doesn't get the approval of the DMA's Board of Censorship they may try to sabotage your campaign, without bothering to explain why.

Opt-out services such as the MPS should not be run by junk mailers. Ideally, there would be an independent organisation in which both junk mailers and the public are represented. At the moment only the interests of junk mailers are served.

What should happen with Royal Mail? The Adam Smith Institute reckons the company's inexorably decline on the back of competition for the delivery of mostly unwanted junk-mail and the surge in e-mail can be stopped by privatising the whole lot and abolishing the Universal Service Obligation [Link to Adam Smith Institute removed in July 2011 as the page has been removed - JB]. A likely scenario maybe, but not a very popular one.

A solution I haven't heard being mentioned yet is reducing delivery days. If there's less post, why not skip Saturday deliveries, as for instance the US Postal Service is considering? Or why not go even further and deliver mail only every other day? When I suggested this to a Royal Mail manager a while ago I learned that this has actually been considered by the company, but that it's unlikely to ever happen. Partly because people whose birthday falls on a Tuesday would be unhappy if mail is only delivered on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, but more so because Royal Mail's strength is that it delivers mail to every address in the country, six days a week.

Maybe, then, the company should try to take a stake in the online economy. Canada Post has long since recognised that there will soon be hardly any bills to deliver and has come up with epost, a service whereby you receive and manage your bills in a single account. It's something I would definitely sign up for, provided of course that I don't get ejunk.

The recent poll organised by ForestEthics has identified Capital One, American Express, and Bank of America as the worst junk mail offenders in the States. Americans are now invited to stand up to the polluters and join the Return to Offender Action Day on 10 November 2009. There's even a Return to Offender Video Contest, so no doubt we'll be hearing more from the campaigners for a Do Not Mail register.

With an unpopular postal strike likely to start on Thursday, it was interesting to read this thought-provoking account from postman Roy Mayall (a pseudonym) in the London Review of Books.

Mayall argues Royal Mail's claim that mail volumes are decreasing (by 5.5% in the 12 months to May 2009) is false. It may be true that figures are down; but volumes are not. For what Royal Mail has done, according to Mayall, is artificially lowering its estimate of the average number of mail items contained in a single delivery box. The estimated number of letters in a single box used to be 208. However, within the last year Royal Mail has, arbitrarily, and without consultation, reduced the number to 150. When unions organised a random count over a two-week period, they came to an average of 267 mail items per box.

This is not to say that Royal Mail is a healthy business. But, maintains, Mayall, the problem isn't that there is less mail. Instead, it's deregulation that's threatening the company's future. Rival companies such as TNT, UK Mail and Citypost now pick up lucrative contracts from large corporations, for whom they collect and sort the post and then hand it over to Royal Mail for delivery. In the words of Mayall: Royal Mail does the work. TNT takes the profit.

So is there less mail? People may be sending less letters, but then the average person never sent as much letters as we would like to think. Bank statements may be viewed online nowadays, but then the internet has also generated a lot of business for Royal Mail - Amazon was founded in 1994, eBay in 1995, and LoveFilm as recent as 2003. And what about junk mail?

"'Figures are down', we chortle mirthlessly, as we load the third batch of door-to-door catalogues onto our frames, adding yet more weight to our bags, and more minutes of unpaid overtime to our clock. We get paid 1.67 pence per item of unaddressed mail, an amount that hasn't changed in ten years. It is paid separately from our wages, and we can't claim overtime if we run past our normal hours because of these items. We also can't refuse to deliver them. This junk mail is one of the Royal Mail's most profitable sidelines and my personal contribution to global warming: straight through the letterbox and into the bin."

Online directory 192.com has relaunched its attack on the paper version of the phone book. Its earlier Say no to Phone Books campaign had a promising start but never really took off. This time, it seems, the company means business.

Not only is 192.com now calling for an opt-in system for phone books (the initial campaign demanded an opt-out system), it has also persuaded Global Action Plan and Hammersmith and Fulham Council to support the campaign. Both have an interest in cutting back on the 25 million phone books that are distributed to British households and businesses every year. The environmental charity is well-known for practical action, and it are local authorities that pick up the bill for disposing of millions unused and unwanted directories. According to Councillor Greg Smith, taxpayers in Hammersmith and Fulham pay £22,700 annually in Council Tax to recycle or landfill telephone books.

In the four days since the campaign was launched more than 3,000 people have already signed 192.com's petition for an opt-in system for telephone books. If people continue to sign up at the current rate the petition may well become as popular as the one with the most signatures at the moment; a petition calling on the Prime Minister to resign.

So, here's something practical you can do to help Mother Earth; sign the petition and ask BT to skip your letterbox next time it is being delivered in your area.