So far, I've had only one party-political leaflet for the local elections this Thursday. About a month ago the local Tories suddenly started delivering "regular" newsletters to keep us informed about its War On Potholes. All the other parties seem to have respected the 'No Junk Mail' sign on our door.

I only noticed the absence of political junk mail when I got an e-mail from someone who had delivered a party-political leaflet to a household with a 'No Junk Mail' sign on the letter box. I'm not sure exactly what happened but I gather the recipients took offence. Which raises the question: how should political parties treat anti-junk mail signs?

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, at the moment there isn't an official definition of 'junk mail'. The Direct Marketing Association refuses to acknowledge the existence of anti-junk mail signs (it's not mentioned in its Code of Conduct and they refuse to discuss promoting letterbox stickers with Defra) and so we have to muddle along. Personally, I think junk mail should be defined as 'unaddressed, commercial mail items' - a definition that includes items such as pizza leaflets and brochures from estate agents but not items such as free newspapers and political leaflets. But… you may disagree and argue that the definition should include all unaddressed, unsolicited mail items. For as long as the regulator is unwilling to do its job we're never going to agree.

That said, there are practical solutions.

Until a couple of years ago I used to deliver political leaflets for the local Greens. The question whether or not to ignore 'No Junk Mail' stickers came up once and it turned out that I was the only person in the party who always skipped letterboxes with such signs. The general feeling was that our leaflets were informative (i.e. free from negative campaigning) and an important part of the democratic process. To me that argument sounded rather pretentious and I proposed a compromise; we could check with people who got a 'No Junk Mail' sign on the door whether or not they would like to receive our leaflets. If people tell you they're not interested you don't have to annoy them any more (and they'll almost certainly appreciate that you took the effort to check); and if someone tells you they do want the leaflets you've made contact with a potential voter. The compromise got rejected - which tends to happen when you're in a minority of one - but I still think it was a sensible suggestion. Better, at least, than what the Greens in Brighton came up with a couple of years later.

A while back I wrote about Royal Mail's Delivery to Neighbour scheme. In case you missed the news, your postman may now deliver mail items that don't fit through your letterbox to a neighbour. If you don't get on with your neighbours you can opt out by obtaining a Neighbours Not Trusted sticker.

Of course I asked Royal Mail to send me one of the stickers. Not because I object to stuff being delivered to my neighbours but because I reckoned the sticker might be a great template for a Royal Mail 'No Unaddressed Mail' sticker. Having such a sticker would be a welcome replacement for the company's obnoxious Door-to-Door Opt-Out.

So... here it is:

You can download and print the sticker as a PNG, or if you know your way around Inkscape you can play with the (zipped) SVG file.

As an aside, someone has contacted me to say Royal Mail is currently not sending out its 'Neighbours Not Trusted' stickers because of quality control issues. It seems Royal Mail didn't realise that stickers for outdoor use should be screen printed - if they're not the colours will fade within weeks. If you don't want to wait until they've sorted out the problem you might want to print the sticker yourself:

Update (3 November 2012)

The 'Neighbours Not Trusted' stickers have now been redesigned and are available again.

Update (13 November 2012)

The person who contacted me about the problems with the stickers has now set up a petition calling on Government to cancel the 'Neighbours Not Trusted' scheme. (Please note I don't endorse the petition - I'm merely mentioning it for the benefit of those who are opposed to the scheme).

There's a new product in the Sticker Shop: 'No Cold Callers' stickers. I'm hoping Stop Junk Mail will increasingly cover more kinds of unsolicited marketing than 'just' junk mail. These stickers are, I hope, just the start.

As always, the design is simple-but-effective. The stickers are small enough to be placed just above or below a doorbell - which is of course the best place to put a doorbell sticker. And, because they're small they're cheap; I'm hoping to sell them for just 60p each. Buy now before I put the price up!

• Buy a white 'No Cold Callers' sticker
• Buy a red 'No Cold Callers' sticker

If you don't have an anti-junk mail sticker yet there's an even better deal: for £1.20 you get a letterbox sticker and a doorbell sticker:

• stopjunkmail.org.uk/stickers/no_cold_callers.php

From tonight I'm hoping to be selling a new anti-junk mail sticker in the Stop Junk Mail Shop. It's the first sticker in the shop to include charity bags in the list of unwanted items. This is partly on popular demand, and partly because I'm currently getting at least one charity bag per week myself (at my old address I only got a handful a year).

As always, the design of the sticker is simple and effective, and the quality is as you would expect; the stickers have been screen printed by a local company. They're larger than the other stickers in the shop (110 x 65mm) but the price is the same: £1 each, plus 50p for postage and packaging (for any number of stickers). With an order you'll get a free opt-out card to sign up to the Door-to-Door Opt-Out, which will also stop unaddressed mail delivered by the Royal Mail.

As indicated, the sticker isn't in the shop yet - I'm working on a redesign of the sticker pages as the list of goodies for sale is becoming a bit unwieldy. If you can't wait, you can already buy one of the stickers:

• Add sticker to basket
• View basket

I got this leaflet about a 'delivery to neighbour' trial from my postman this morning. If you live in Bolton, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Hull, Norwich, Swansea or Wigan you may have received the same leaflet.

It's a rather innocent trial; for the next three months any items that don't fit through my letterbox will be delivered to a neighbour if I'm not at home when the postman rings (so that I don't have to get it redelivered or, worse, get on me bike to collect it from the sorting office at the other side of town). So, why even mention it?

The interesting thing about the trial is that Royal Mail has produced a sticker for households that don't want to take part in the trial. The company understands not everybody gets on with their neighbours, and so you'll be given the option to opt out of taking part. To do so, you need to contact Royal Mail who will then send you a sticker for your door.

A sticker? What a great idea… Maybe Royal Mail could invent a sticker for people not interested in leaflets delivered by the postman as well. It could perhaps read 'No Junk Mail'.

Of course, Royal Mail has a policy of ignoring any type of 'No Junk Mail' sign. People not interested in unaddressed mail delivered by the postman are supposed to register with Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out (which only 0.8% of households in the UK has done). It does make you wonder… why does Royal Mail insist postmen push unaddressed crap through letterboxes displaying a 'No Junk Mail' sign while at the same time asking them to watch out for opt-out stickers for its new trial?

Royal Mail's concern about people displaying 'No Junk Mail' signs is that they may not be making an 'informed decision' about not receiving unaddressed mail. People in Norwich, for instance, would today have missed out on a leaflet from Virgin Media about the Blackberry Curve and a charity bag from the Salvation Army. Royal Mail sees it as its duty to prevent people are deprived of such "important communications".

So, here's an idea. Why doesn't Royal Mail offer opt-out stickers for unaddressed junk mail via its website and require people to tick a box to say that they fully understand the consequences of opting out of receiving unaddressed mail items distributed by Royal Mail. I guess such a sticker scheme would have its own set of problems (I don't like the idea of Royal Mail having a monopoly on anti-junk mail stickers, for instance) but it sure would be more effective than the Door-to-Door Opt-Out.