The economics of Junk Mail

Trash, rubbish, garbage, crap- whatever you throw away, do so. Bury it deep in a landfill or send it off to sea. It's not your problem, you did the right thing taking out your trash. The country isn't in a garbage crisis: At least not yet.

The Trash Crisis of the millennium is not an acute problem; it can't be solved by simply changing behaviour. For crisis prevention a systematic initiative needs to be addressed. The average North American produces 1.3 tons of garbage each year (about 7 pounds per day).  Once our trash is collected the discarded waste is out of mind. Remember, there is plenty of room in the landfills for decades of trash to collect.

Of course I am being facetious, the crap we through away is not exactly environmental healthy. Nor is it cheep. Waste is a cost; and wastefulness is just a ridiculously stupid economical strategy. Waste is bad for business, customers, and the environment.

More than half of the mail carried by the US postal Service and Canada Post is junk mail. In 2011; 85 billion pieced of junk mail were sent via the US Postal Service. 4 million tons of junk mail were distributed and disposed of without thought. As taxpayers; we all subsidize federal post systems that carry  junk mail.

 A typical flyer cost 2-10 cents to print; at a small run of 2000 flyers the person sending the flyers in only losing about $400 from pocket. Though to get the true cost of the flyer transportation and disposal cost need be considered. From a consumer perspective, NOTHING annoys me more that a flyer placed on my windshield or in my mail box. I don't want irrelevant junk mail. As a customer, junk mail annoys me- and in receiving junk mail I am less likely to support the company who was trying to get my attention with a silly piece of paper.  Of the 4 million tons of junk mail floating around the US it is estimated that only 1 million ton will be recycled.

The brilliance of social networking and marketing is that it allows customers and business to interact on a personal and mutually beneficial platform. Business now have the ability to directly interact with their target market. There is no need for junk mail and flyers. Junk mail is just a waste of  primary, secondary, tertiary and capital resources.