The last day of 2011 - time to reflect on another year of campaigning. Instead of giving the usual chronological overview I'll this time pick out a number of 'Hot Junk Mail Topics'.

Industry propaganda

I'm never sure if the way the junk mail industry runs its opt-out schemes for junk mail is a hilarious insult to people's intelligence or simply shameless propaganda. In any case, thanks to Stop Junk Mail the schemes became a little more customer-friendly in 2011.

Royal Mail made a couple of improvements to the way it's operating and advertising the Door-to-Door Opt-Out. Not only has the company given up its attempt to keep the phone number for the opt-out scheme secret (the number to call is 01865 796964), it has also set up an e-mail address which people can use if they have queries about their registration. It's a very long e-mail address:

• door_to_door_ops_admin@royalmail.com

To request an opt-out form you can still send an e-mail to optout@royalmail.com.

Royal Mail's web page with information about the opt-out scheme can finally be found via its online Shepherd's Wife, and just a couple of days ago the company removed the claim that it 'only' distributes 25% of all unaddressed mail from the same page (which I'll have more to say about in the new year). The first was the result of regularly ridiculing the company's PR strategy, the second of a Freedom of Information request.

The Mailing Preference Service also removed a misleading and unsubstantiated claim from its website in 2011. For years the Direct Marketing Association told the public that signing up the scheme reduces personally addressed advertising mail by "up to 95%". After making a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority the junk mailers finally agreed to be more realistic about how much junk mail the scheme can prevent.

Paper directories

My prediction for 2011 was that publishers of paper directories would make it easier for people to cancel unwanted phone books. I was wrong, although some progress has been made.

The Yellow Pages for the first time published information about opting out in its directory and changed its greenwash strategy; in April the company killed the woodland mini beast Kirk.

Thomson Local stopped the production of the rather silly 'No Thomson Local' door sticker but, to its credit, remains the only directory publisher to send a confirmation letter to people opt out of receiving its directory.

BT seemed to be on the right track. The company followed Yell's lead by mentioning its opt-out scheme in the latest edition of the phone book. However, BT then made a fresh attempt at preventing people from cancelling the delivery of the phone book by retrospectively demanding that people give the company their phone number. The Information Commissioner's Office agreed this was a breach of the Data Protection Act and asked BT to review its policy.

Stickers and other goodies

After I reluctantly introduced 'No Junk Mail' stickers to the shop in 2010, I decided to redesign the good old 'No/No' and 'No/Yes' stickers. Equally nice is the 'Addressed Mail Only' sticker I introduced in November.

Also new in the shop is the return to sender stamper. I'm not that enthusiastic about the original product, as I've explained in a vlog, but combined with a (short) paper copy of the Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail and one of the above-mentioned stickers it's another nice product.

Since July, Stop Junk Mail is donating 10% of the sales to good causes. The first cause was Adblock Plus, the second SOS Children's Villages. The cause for the next three months will be announced shortly.

Junk mail in the media

For no apparent reason junk mail got much more media coverage than it normally gets. It started with a story in the Daily Fascist. According to the tabloid Royal Mail is seeking to deliver 15 leaflets per week to the average household. As you would expect from a tabloid, the figure is wide off the mark.

In February, the Independent picked up on the (old) story that the Mailing Preference Service / Direct Marketing Association refuses to send people registration forms in the post because they want to save paper. "One of the finest pot/kettle examples of our time" indeed.

BBC Panorama covered both junk mail and scam mail in July. In my opinion the programme was rather poor. Much more informative was That's Britain's take on junk mail, in November.

Which? Magazine also covered junk mail in November. I was given the honour to act as junk mail expert, and wrote an article for the Which? 'convo blog' about self-regulation by the junk mail industry.

Website

New in 2011 was the Royal Junk Mail Catablog. The aim of the blog is to investigate how much "important information" is distributed via Royal Mail's door-to-door scheme. A year on, I can now tell you that of the (exactly) 100 pieces of unaddressed junk mail I received from the postman in 2011 only five could be classified as 'information'. As an aside, the fact that I got 'only' 100 leaflets from the postman this year is quite interesting in itself, given that Royal Mail aims to increase the amount of unaddressed mail it distributes (apparently the target is six leaflets per household per week - and not 15 as suggested by the Fascist).

More importantly, the Stop Junk Mail website has been redesigned. Most of the issues I talked about on this blog still need to be addressed. In particular, having only a small number of items in the main navigation bar isn't ideal. Still, I reckon it's an improvement over the old website (which you can still view in the UK Web Archive).

Politics

Once again Government didn't bother to respond to its own public consultation about the future of the Edited Electoral Register. The consultation closed on 23 February 2010, and a response was due on 18 May 2010. That's politics for you…

Sometimes the inertia of MPs is a good thing. I was pleased to find that the All-Party Group on Junk Mail has ceased to exist. As you'd expect, the members of group didn't bother telling the public why the decision to abolish the group was taken, and they've allowed the junk mail company that provided the secretariat of the group to continue to use the website as a propaganda tool. Still, it's good to see the junk mail industry can no longer dictate MPs what to think and say.

Another sign that politicians have become less willing to do as they're told by the junk mail industry is the latest 'responsibility deal' between Defra and the junk mail industry. Although the deal is by no means as good as suggested by the mainstream media it certainly looks more promising than previous agreements. And, I'm pleased to say a number of things I had suggested to Defra have been included in the agreement. In particular, from April 2012 the two opt-out schemes for unaddressed junk mail will be merged and from the same month you should finally be able to register online with the new-style opt-out scheme (via the website of the Mailing Preference Service). As always, the devil is in the detail - only last week I found that there will be separate registration processes for the opt-out schemes, for instance. Still, compared with the previous deal (which introduced the Your Choice Dummy Scheme) it's a lot more ambitious.

Another year has nearly passed. Time to look back at 2009 in terms of junk mail…

In January I published the Guide to Stopping Junk Mail in the USA. Junk mail in the States accounts for nearly a third of all mail delivered in the world, and the Stop Junk Mail website gets many visitors from the the other side of the Atlantic. As is the case in the UK, stopping junk mail in the USA is not at all as easy as junk mailers would like you to believe…

In the UK, our friends at the Direct Marketing Association introduced a new voluntary code for junk mail. The PAS 2020 standard aims to ward off Government legislation while not asking individual bulk mailers to commit to anything. Or is that too cynical?

As has become a tradition, February was once again Scam Awareness Month. I wrote about Mrs A, an elderly lady from Wales who is getting about 40 scam letters a day. Sadly, the Office of Fair Trading, Trading Standards and Consumer Direct are doing nothing to stop the criminals who are robbing Mrs A of her life savings, even though they got their address.

In the same month I got the 'Top Tip of the Year' for dealing with leaflet deliverers ignoring 'No Junk Mail' signs: the justice for the price of an envelope method.

In March I launched Junk Buster. A simple application that allows you to quickly contact the three main junk mail opt-out services in the UK, as well as the three paper directories delivered to British households and businesses every year. A much needed one-point-stop for reducing junk mail indeed…

April started with lots of American junk mail news. San Francisco became the first American city to pass a Do Not Mail resolution [Hyperlink to donotmail.org/blog/ removed as the linked page no longer exists - JB], while I tried to dispel some of the false arguments used by American junk mailers. Reducing junk mail would not save trees? Hmmm? I don't think so.

There was domestic junk mail news as well. After the introduction of the PAS 2020 standard for junk mail in January, Royal Mail got the go-ahead for a new Sustainable Mail product. To encourage junk mailers to comply with the PAS 2020 standard, they can now get a 'green junk mail' discount from Royal Mail.

And, we uploaded another junk mail film: Hamlet.

In May, I decided to put the e-mail correspondence I had had with the junk mailers at the Direct Marketing Association on this blog. Soon after the launch of Junk Buster (see March above) I discovered that the junk mail lobby group was 'capturing' e-mails sent to the Mailing Preference Service and Your Choice Opt-Out. To this day the Direct Marketing Association has been unable to confirm why they didn't like to be contacted by people wanting to reduce unsolicited mail; the correspondence ends with my request to let me have a copy of the rules and regulations for both the Mailing Preference Service and Your Choice. Could it be that the Direct Marketing Association is making up arbitrary rules as they go along?

'Election Communications' are strictly speaking not junk mail. They give political parties the chance to set out their stall and are thus supposed to be an important part of the democratic process. But were the leaflets produced for the European elections this year by Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems, and the BNP really not just junk mail?

Also in May, Shrink, a coalition of environmental organisations aiming to reduce paper waste, published the results of an investigation into what different organisation in the UK are doing to reduce their paper consumption. Unsurprisingly, the five catalogues included in the research all either 'failed' or 'disqualified'.

In June, I published the results of my mini-research into how well Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out functions. Of the people who had contacted Royal Mail via Junk Buster less than one in three found that the service is effective. A company called UKLC apparantly reckoned there is still a market for stopping unaddressed mail, and came up with this letterbox lock.

Nothing much happened in July and August, which meant I had plenty of time to work on Junk Buster V2 (which was launched in September). The service Junk Buster offers is still the same; via the widget you can contact up six opt-out services via a single web form. The new Junk Buster does make it more difficult for the Direct Marketing Association to sabotage the project.

That 'junk mail' and 'waste' go hand in hand was highlighted in October by the Guardian. The paper calculated that 18 per cent of your Council Tax bill goes to disposing of waste. Yet, local authorities are spending very little of this money on waste reduction. Even cutting back on junk mail is hardly being promoted; 75 per cent of councils in England and Wales do not encourage people to register with junk mail opt-out schemes such as the Mailing Preference Service.

Also in October, online directory 192.com launched a second campaign against paper directories. Its previous campaign called for an opt-out system for directories; this time the company is demanding an opt-in system instead.

And of course Royal Mail was making headlines in October. While many commentators critcised postmen for going on strike, a postie called Roy Mayall (yep, that's a pseudonym) went on the offensive. Royal Mail's claim that mail volumes are down is false, according to Mayall. The problem is 'deregulation', which allows companies such as TNT to take the profits for work done by Royal Mail. The answer, as argued in Mayall's 'letter' to Granny Smith, is making the Royal Mail public again.

In November, the Sun added its contribution to the debate about Royal Mail and junk mail. Under the header 'Post ban prat' the paper reported that the deputy leader of the Communication Workers Union has a 'No Junk Mail' sign on his door. Unaware that such a sign doesn't even stop leaflets delivered by Royal Mail, the paper went on to claim that this could cost Royal Mail billions of pounds a year. While the first MPs jumped on the bandwagon the Sun quietly removed the article from its website - it turned out the paper had photographed a neighbour's letter box.

The recession meanwhile was affecting junk mail volumes, in particular in the States. Estimates of the impact of the recession have varied wildly and junk mail research is never objective and independent; but if it is claimed that credit card junk mail has decreased by more than 70% its probably justified to conclude there is a downward trend.

And, while Trading Standard once again showed how it is failing to stop scam mail, a 10 Downing Street petition by Marylin Baldwin form the campaign group Think Jessica got a rather worrying response from the Government; Gordon Brown and his colleagues seem to think that registering with the Mailing Preference Service will stop scams.

More constructive was the Government's publication of the long-awaited consultation paper on the future of the edited electoral register. It took the Government a year to open the debate on the question whether or not the edited version of the electoral roll should be abolished, as was recommended by the Information Commissioner. Still, the consultation document looks promising, if only because 'keeping things as they are' is not an option. The edited roll may continue to exist, but it unlikely that junk mailers will still be allowed to use it as a mailing list.

In December it became clear that what will definitely be abolished is the 'junk mail allowance' for MPs. Getting rid of the allowance was one of the recommendations in the Kelly Report on MP's expenses. Kelly found that the allowance was seldomly used by MPs to inform constituents about their Westminster business; instead they used the £10k per year to promote whatever party they happen to represent. From 1 January 2010, tax payers will no longer be funding this type of party political junk mail.

Of course, on hearing this news some MPs quickly checked if they had spent their £10k yet, and rapidly produced one last piece of junk…

It's the time of the year to look back and reflect. So, here's the year 2008 in terms of junk mail…

January saw the first adjudication of the Fundraising Standards Board. A complaint about the frequency of mailings from Cancer Research UK was not upheld, although the self-regulatory body acknowledges the complainant had grounds for being annoyed.

February was Scamnesty month. Members of the public were asked to drop potential scam mailings in 'scamnesty bins' at public libraries across the country. The mailings collected from the bins was used by the Office for Fair Trading and Trading Standards to chase the scam artists and to educate the public. Every year 3.2 million adults in the UK fall victim to a scam involving deceptive unsolicited mailings, phone calls or e-mails.

In the same month, the company behind the Bereavement Register accused charities of mismanaging data. Research by the Bereavement Register suggested that charities make very little use of suppression files. As a result, large amounts of charity junk mail is send to people who have moved or deceased. What the company did not mention in its media campaign is that charities do have to pay the Bereavement Register lots of money to get hold of the suppression files.

And, February was also the month I started a stop junk mail group on Facebook. [This group no longer exists - JB].

In March I learned that less than 0.5 per cent of British households is opted out of unaddressed mail delivered by Royal Mail. Since, we have tried to promote Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out in various ways and to make opting out of receiving door-drops from the postman a bit easier, amongst other by creating an online opt-out form [Since replaced by Junk Buster - JB].

In April, online directory welovelocal.com started a discussion about business directories being delivered door-to-door. About 50 million directories are distributed by Yell and Thomson Local alone and the online directory rightly questioned whether or not there is still a demand for these books being dropped on each and every doorstep.

192.com added its weight behind the campaign started by welovelocal.com in May, when it launched the website saynotophonebooks.com. On the site you can still sign a petition for a central opt-out system for directories, similar to the Mailing Preference Service.

May also saw the introduction of new Consumer Protection Regulations. The regulations ban 31 types of unfair sales practices outright and closes loopholes that rogue traders used to be able to exploit. One of the new offences is "making persistent and unwanted solicitations by telephone, fax, email or other remote media" and carries a maximum fine of £5,000 and/or a term of imprisonment of up to two years - we're waiting for the first bulk mailer to be send to jail!

Another company showed its dislike of junk mail in June. The Green Insurance Company launched the first UK Junk Mail Awards in a bid to 'name and shame' businesses that excessively use junk mail to promote their products and services. For reasons that have never been made public, no awards have been given out. Instead, the campaign was quietly removed from the company's website.

From time to time bulk mailers take initiatives to make the junk mail industry a bit less polluting. In June, the Direct Marketing Association introduced an opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail, called Your Choice. The DMA was more of less ordered by the Government to set up an opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail and unfortunately they decided to set up it up so that it's unlikely to significantly reduce the amount of leaflets you receive. To make things worse, the scheme is also about as customer-unfriendly as Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out. It's not possible, for instance, to opt-out online.

More green initiatives were announced by the DMA in July. The representative body of bulk mailers in the UK revealed that it had endorsed a proposal by the British Standards Institute for stricter environmental standards for junk mail. The proposals, which will not be mandatory and are still being discussed, would increase the use of recycled paper in junk mail and decrease the amount of environmentally unsound laminations, envelope windows and inks.

Much more importantly, in the same month the Information Commissioner recommended the abolishment of the Edited Electoral Register. At present, local authorities are obliged to sell an edited version of the Electoral Register to anyone prepared to pay a small fee. The roll contains the personal details of anyone who fails to tick an opt-out box on their electoral registration form and is primarily used by marketeers to produce junk mail lists. The Information Commissioner said that selling voters' personal details is "an unsatisfactory way for local authorities to treat personal information". The Government recently announced that it will start a public consultation on the recommendation to scrap the edited register in the new year.

July also was an exiting month for Stop Junk Mail. Using the profits from our sticker sales I introduced two new products (envelope re-use labels and return to sender labels). I also published a new Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail (with brilliant illustrations by Eloise O'Hare).

Disappointing was the Government response to our Go-Dutch petition, also in July. The Government has no plans to take measures to prohibit or restrict junk mail, we were told.

In August, the Local Government Association spoke out in favour of scrapping the edited electoral register. A survey of electoral administrators learned that 98 per cent of them agrees that bulk mailers should not have access to the electoral roll. The chairman of the LGA said that selling the electoral roll "undermines democracy, dissuades people from voting and gives people the impression that the council is profiting from selling their personal information."

In September we made friends with the excellent Junk Mail Revenge Day Plot on Facebook [Link removed in June 2012 as it appears the group has been removed by Facebook - JB]. The group encourages people to send back addressed junk mail on the last day of each month.

September was also the month we launched our first YouTube video…

More junk mail research was published in October. This time it was about junk mail volumes. In the year to June 2008, expenditure on addressed junk mail had dropped by an estimated 6.2 per cent. Particularly interesting was the drop in expenditure of Capital One, who cut its direct mail budget by no less than 83 per cent and dropped from the second to the 53rd place in the 'junk mail top 100'. Direct mail volumes have been decreasing since 2004, but volumes of unaddressed mail are still on the increase.

October was also the month we finished our second YouTube video…

As mentioned above, November was the month that the Government announced that it will start a public consultation on the scrapping of the edited register in 2009.

And, finally, in November we made a third video…

All in all a reasonably interesting junk mail year. It's disappointing Government remains extremely reluctant to do anything that will upset Direct Marketing Association and that bulk mailers failed to introduce any meaningful 'green' business practices themselves in 2008. On the bright side, a lot has been done to stop scams and both environmental and data protection issues will have to be faced in 2009.

For Stop Junk Mail the year has been a good one. Visitor numbers are up significantly, I managed to fund the campaign and got lots of positive feedback on Stop Junk Mail's work. For me personally, the nicest thing this year was probably appearing on MacAulay and Co. However much I dread the media (is there a spokesperson out there?) it's quite exciting to sit in a studio and get all sorts of questions fired at you.

Finally, a big thank you to the many people who have helped with the campaign this year, whether by editing our stop junk mail kit, making videos, buying our goodies, making a small donation or just by saying something nice.