Junk mail is advertising of one sort or another that arrives in your P.O. Box, mailbox, under your windscreen wipers, or even handed to you through your driver’s window when you are stopped at traffic lights. There does not seem to be a day that passes without being confronted with junk mail.
It is actually the result of direct marketing campaigns designed to get you to buy all manner of products from meat to electrical goods and from spectacles to furniture.
The official name for this is Direct Targeted Market Literature (DTML) and it is delivered by the handful, with Cyprus – it has to be said – having more than its fair share.
Many retailers throughout Europe collect information from buying so called “mailing lists”, or by scanning loyalty cards that compile records of your preferred purchases. Retailers in Cyprus though do not seem to be that subtle. Instead they simply swamp households and P.O. Boxes with the stuff. There is also an effective way of reducing junk mail throughout many parts of Europe. It is called Mail Preference Service, and operates by forwarding your request to a central authority, which in turn informs retailers on your behalf that you wish to be taken off delivery lists. Such a system does not exist here in Cyprus, and so it seems that we will all have to wait until hopefully the printing and distribution of junk mail is just no longer cost effective.
The environmental and security implications of junk mail are enormous. For example, the paper wastage aspect of junk mail is frankly horrifying, especially when you consider that most of it ends up in waste bins or is discarded to collect and blow about the street.
The security risks it poses are many with the so called “give away” trick being the greatest. If, for example, the owner or renter of a property is away, their mailbox continues to be stuffed with junk mail, which in turn gives a would-be-burglar a very good indication that the property is empty and that there is nobody at home to hinder breaking in.
Unfortunately there is little if anything you can do in Cyprus to reduce or eliminate tiresome junk mail from being thrust upon you. But one thing that many householders are increasingly doing, is asking a neighbour to routinely empty their mailbox of junk mail whilst they are away. One other thing you can try is to post a sticker on your mailbox asking (in Greek and English) for junk mail not to be left. These small stickers are available free from Green Party offices.
NOTE: Published in THE CYPRUS SUN Magazine
