365: Red; January 24, Junk

The recent announcement by Canada Post that services were going to be "gutted," I think was the term, has had a lot of ink lately. People who will see the end of to-the-door delivery are outraged.

There has been a massive shift in how people send and receive information. Most companies are able - and willing, as it is a huge cost savings - to provide monthly bills by email; most of what we write back and forth to people is also via email, or Facebook, or some other digital form; Fax still exists too. So the necessity for snail mail, as it has come to be called, has decreased exponentially and what is still being delivered is decidedly heavy on the junk side.

It seems the holdouts are companies that have not yet got it that direct mail has about a one percent response rate. Otherwise, that advertising usually winds up in the bin, or, as my friend noted, on the family fire pit.

In my case today, nine bits of direct mail advertising and one bill were delivered to my door; a bill I pay by direct withdrawal anyway, and for which the company provides an annual statement, making that particular paper bill redundant.

Where this concerns Canada Post, however, is this: direct mail is a revenue source. One cannot refuse delivery because the advertisers have paid for this stuff to be delivered, so CP must do it. It strikes me mail delivery is in its death throes if this is what it is reduced to, kinda like when actors end their careers at dinner theatres; fascinating like a car wreck.

As for these advertisers, I would rather, if I have to get it at all, have this stuff come to my in-box. Less paper to chuck, and a correspondingly lower level of guilt, not for ignoring the ads but for the waste of trees... with all the brouhaha about climate change, you'd think people would realise less to-the-door junk mail would have an effect on vehicle emissions (from delivery), pollution, destruction of forests, and lessening of processing chemicals in the water.