The first Royal Junk Mail door-drop of 2011! Anglian Water Direct goes for the 'this looks so official' trick. The item looks much like my payslip, with one of those tear-off strips at the top. It's addressed 'For the attention of...', which sounds a lot more posh than 'To the householder'. The text 'Reply by date' is included to give the junk mail a sense of urgency. It could be something important. Maybe, just maybe...

To be sure, there's nothing important about the mailing. Anglian Water Direct wants to sell its water supply pipe cover. The envelope includes lots of small print, a 'summary of cover', a voucher, and a direct debit form which can be posted to a freepost address.

Anglian Water's junk mail doesn't meet Royal Mail's 'sustainable mail' standards but they've made some effort to reduce the mail-out's carbon footprint. The paper is quite thin and on the back is printed a 'Please read me then recycle me' and a 'paper from sustainable forests' logo. The latter logo always annoys me; it ought to say 'paper from a monoculture tree plantation with no ecological value whatsoever'. A forest can't be a tree factory; it's an ecosystem that takes a very long time to develop. Which is why lots of people go for walks in forests and why nobody ever goes to a tree plantation. Also, the inclusion of the 'sustainable paper' logo implies that the mailing doesn't contain recycled fibres.

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So, what's the verdict on Anglian Water's door-drop?