Greenpeace has started a campaign highlighting the link between rainforest destruction and KFC. Colonel Sanders consumes lots of paper and it originates from a dodgy source; those cups with sugary drinks and buckets with dead chickens are made from illegally logged paper. Or, more specifically, chances are the paper is bought from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a company that has been at the centre of quite a few environmental controversies and is regularly accused of illegal logging.

I first learned about APP when I read Paper Trails by Mandy Haggith. The company features prominently in the book. Here's a taster:

Back in Pekanbaru, I thought it could not possibly get any worse and then I innocently asked, "There are two pulp mills here in Riau, right? APRIL's and another belonging to Asia Pulp and Paper."
"Right", said Fatra, the round-faced, helpful forest campaigner at Hakiki, one of the grassroots organisations that is part of Jikalahari's forest campaign network. We were sitting drinking tea in their sweltering front office in a suburb of Pekanbaru, getting a briefing.
"What's Asia Pulp and Paper like? Are they as bad as APRIL?"
"Worse", Fatra replied.
"Much worse", confirmed Dede. There was an exchange in Indonesian and nods all around the gathered activists.
"How do you mean?", I asked.
"APP buys much illegal timber and they even log in protected areas. They are responsible for the worst forest destruction, and they pour chlorine pollution into the Siak River, which causes much disease to people downstream."
"So how come you've been taking me to see only what APRIL is getting up to? Surely I should be on APP's trail too?" I felt somehow cheated. If I was there to see the worst excesses of the industry, I might as well really see the worst.
Fatra looked alarmed. "No, no, you must not investigate APP." He checked with Dede to make sure I had properly understood.
"Why not?", I questioned.
He was adamant. "It's much too dangerous."
He and the others started talking all at once. Dede struggled to give a coherent account of all their agitated stories. They told of disappearances, threats to their families and children, violent struggles in communities opposing APP's contractors, homes being bulldozed, even people being killed.
I was stunned. "You mean to say that APRIL are the nice guys in Riau?"
Dede laughed a bleak laugh. "There are no nice guys in the paper industry here."

Greenpeace's report about KFC is entitled How KFC is junking the jungle by driving rainforest destruction in Indonesia. If, like me, you're not on Facebook and Twitter there's not much you can do to support the campaign after you've watched The colonel's secret recipe. It's all about spreading the word on social networking websites.

In January, I contacted my MP about the website of the All-Party Group on Junk Mail. The group had long since been abolished but the Read Group Plc, the junk mail company that provided its secretariat, kept the website alive and shamelessly used it to promote its services and give the public factually incorrect and biased information about reducing junk mail.

I'm pleased to let you know the website has now been taken down.

If you live in the States, have a smartphone, and agree that unsolicited mail is a pest then this may be for you.

A company called Readabl has come up with an app that may help reduce junk mail. The concept behind PaperKarma is simple enough: after downloading the app and submitting your personal details (name, address, e-mail address, and phone number) you can start taking photos of junk mail you want to stop. Uploaded images are run against a database, and if the sender can be identified the app will send the offender an e-mail asking to take your details off its mailing list.

There are some obvious practical issues (is the database kept up to date, do senders respect the requests, etc.) but it's a nice idea, and something that's bound to be introduced in the UK.

Or is it?

Personally, I'm not overly impressed. What's wrong with spending a couple of minutes reading up on how to stop junk mail yourself? Call me old-fashioned, but I find it somewhat ironic that people downloading the app in an attempt to reduce junk mail are at the same time handing over their personal details to a company that doesn't even have a proper website. Unsolicited mail is usually the result of exposing your personal details to potential junk mailers. Wouldn't it better to encourage people to be a bit more vigilant with their personal data?

Whether or not Readabl / PaperKarma can be trusted with your personal details I don't know. What seems clear, though, it that Readabl / PaperKarma is hoping to make money. The app's page on the iTunes site states that it will be free for a limited period only, and the page with privacy information on the PaperKarma website talks about a paper to digital conversion program. This concept has already been introduced in the UK by the Green Preference Service - a company presenting itself as being 'anti-junk mail' but primarily interested in selling people's personal details.

What doesn't convince me either is that the presentation of the PaperKarma product is far from professional. The two paragraphs of text on the PaperKarma home page, for instance, are riddled with errors:

PaperKarma allows you to take photos of the junk mail you wish to stop [Do I really need PaperKarma for that?]. Snap a photo, and you're done [No you're not].

We automatically contact the Mailer [proper noun?] and remove you from their [its!] distribution list [No you're not - you put in a request for someone to be removed]. PaperKarma can stop most junk mail that is addressed directly [as opposed to indirectly?] to you.

Or, take this promotional image from the above-mentioned iTunes page:

Anyway, our junk mail hating friends at the other side of the Pond can download the app for their iPhones, Androids, and Windows phones.

I just watched the first episode of That's Britain, a series aiming to investigate things in modern Britain that "drive us to the wall". The first irritant to be tackled was, perhaps unsurprisingly, junk mail.

To start on a personal note, I was slightly annoyed with the presenters' statement that, according to Which? Magazine we're bombarded with 11 billion pieces of junk mail a year. That figure comes straight from the Facts pages on the Stop Junk Mail website. And so did the statement that a year's worth of junk mail has a weight equivalent to 50,000 double-decker busses (Routemasters, to be precise). It took a fair amount of effort to estimate how much junk mail is produced in the UK, and it's frustrating when an organisation like Which? then takes the credit.

Still, I reckon the programme was reasonably informative - more so than the recent Panorama programme on junk mail. It mentioned the scrapping of the 'three items per household per week' rule, for instance (although it wrongly stated this caused an overall increase in the volume of junk mail - had they had bothered to check the above-mentioned pages with junk mail facts they'd have known junk mail volumes are currently decreasing). Also interesting was the question put to the Environment Secretary: why is Defra making a lot of noise about a not-so-new opt-out website to be launched in April 2012, while the Government is at the same time still allowing anyone to use the edited version of the electoral register as a cheap and convenient junk mail list? Disappointingly, the Environment Secretary wasn't pressed for an answer when she avoided the question. Nor was she asked another obvious question: why hasn't Government responded to its own public consultation on the future of the edited register? The consultation closed on 23 February 2010…

Similarly, the Chief Executive of the Direct Marketing Association was allowed to make the same claim he made when interviewed for Panorama, namely that advertising mail generates £16bn worth of sales each year. Again, the Beeb didn't dare asking the obvious question: can that figure be verified? Can't it be argued that advertising mail actually has a negative effect not only on the economy, but on society at large? After all, by pushing advertisements straight through people's doors junk mailers avoid buying advertising space from for instance newspapers and websites. A move away from advertising mail to other (more sustainable and less annoying) types of advertising (what about sponsoring local community groups and artists?) might well create more jobs than would be lost. What's needed is a proper (independent) cost-benefit analysis of the effects junk mail has on the economy. Sadly, both Panorama and That's Britain didn't have the courage / knowledge / journalistic skills to question anything fed to them by the Direct Marketing Association.

Anyway, if anything That's Britain's item on junk mail raised some important issues, and for a programme that mainly aims to entertain the masses it was more informative than I had expected.

Next month's Which? magazine (which I believe will come out on 27th October) will feature an article about junk mail, and to promote the magazine Which? sent round a press release on Wednesday. Nothing newsworthy, really. It contains a mini version of the Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail; mentions that the average household receives an estimated 453 pieces of junk mail in 2009; and reveals that 84% of Which? members agree that reducing junk mail should be made easier. Yet, newsworthy or not, the response to the press release has been overwhelming. On Thursday I spoke with various local radio stations, and I'm still working my way through an inbox with comments and queries.

It's interesting how junk mail is always good for a bit of a media storm. In particular the Daily Mail presented the story in a rather dramatic fashion. We're drowning in junk mail, apparently.

What no-one noticed is that the figure of 453 pieces of junk mail per household represents a decrease in junk mail volumes. Since 2004, when volumes reach their peak, the amount of junk mail produced in the UK has dropped by about a quarter, or maybe even a third. There's nothing remarkable about this. 'Direct mail' nowadays has to compete with Google, Facebook and other online giants, and the ongoing recession isn't helping junk mailers either.

There's something else that is interesting about the figure of 453 pieces of junk mail: the figure is a complete guesstimate. Had any of the journalists that reported the story bothered to look at the source of the figures - the Facts page on the Stop Junk Mail website - they would have noticed that the junk mail industry refuses to publish any meaningful data about unaddressed junk mail. The real story here is that the public isn't allowed to know exactly how much junk mail is produced in the UK.

Or, maybe that's not the issue after all. Looking at the comments people have left underneath the article in the Mail the issue seems to be quite simple. There are a great many people who just don't want their letterbox stuffed with junk mail.

Building bridges

To accompany the article in Which? magazine I was invited to write a piece for the organisation's Conversation Blog. It's about my favourite topic: self-regulation by the junk mail industry, and how it has failed to cut waste and make it easier for people to reduce unwanted junk mail. Perhaps unavoidably, that article is also being reduced to a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' vote on junk mail. I've come to realise that it doesn't really matter what you write about junk mail; people just have this irresistible urge to voice whatever opinion they already had about the stuff.

I don't mean to sound dismissive about the comments that have been left on the page so far. I'm just observing that none of the comments is a response to the article; it's a collection of opinions about junk mail. That's fine, although also somewhat ironic; the article is an invitation to the junk mail industry to start discussing the junk mail issue with recipients of junk mail. I guess that might be just a bridge too far.