Last year, Hackney Council launched an initiative to encourage residents to sign up for the Mail Preference Service (MPS) and reduce the amount of ‘unwanted mail' residents of the London borough receive each year. It offered a free pack containing a ‘no junk mail' sticker, a Royal Mail opt-out card and details of how to register for the MPS.

The stance taken by Hackney Council reflects a widespread misunderstanding of the environmental impact of direct mail, and ignores the steps taken by direct mail providers to reduce the environmental damage resulting from their activities. Initiatives such as PAS 2020 and a trend towards more targeted, less wasteful production of direct mail and a greater understanding of the true environmental impact of internet marketing, are laying to waste the idea that direct mail is by definition junk mail.

The sector has done much to reduce its environmental impact in recent years, but the introduction of PAS 2020 in January this year was a landmark. The initiative was launched by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in conjunction with key industry figures, the BSI, the government and various NGOs to prepare the industry for the new challenges posed by restrictive environmental targets and to counter the public's negative perception of the marketing medium.

The PAS 2020 standard (see box) was created in part to assist the direct mail sector to meet its environmental targets. In 2003, it signed a Producer Responsibility Agreement with Defra in which it committed to reduce the volume of direct mail that ended up in landfill. At the time of the agreement, just 13% of the 4bn items of direct mail sent out each year did not end up in landfill sites. The DMA committed to reducing this to 30% by 2005, 55% by 2009 and 75% by 2013.

Robert Keitch, director of media channel development and environmental affairs at the DMA, says the standard establishes a set of environmental objectives, performance levels and indicators on how to create an environmentally responsible campaign. PAS 2020 is not an easy standard to meet and is designed to be aspirational for printers aiming to reduce their carbon footprint.

"The publication of the first edition of PAS 2020 is only the start of the DMA's project to prepare the direct marketing industry for the environmental challenges that face it," says Keitch. "It will be reviewed and revised every couple of years to ensure that it reflects the most up-to-date information for every channel. This will be particularly important as new evidence emerges on the true environmental impact of digital marketing, which is currently regarded as the ‘greenest' of all communication channels."

To coincide with and support PAS 2020, the Royal Mail launched its Sustainable Mail service, which offers direct mail houses that comply with the standard a discount on postage of 2% for those who meet the entry level requirements of the standard and 4.7% of those who meet the intermediate level. This provides printers with a financial incentive to achieve the standard.

Paper tiger
The paper industry has also come out fighting. A recently launched initiative, Two Sides, has set out to challenge various myths that are held in public consciousness.

At the same time, paper manufacturers across the world have been cutting their emissions at far higher rates than other industries. According to the latest Sustainability Report released by the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) paper manufacturers on the continent have cut CO2 emissions per tonne of paper by 42% since 1990.

Direct mailers have also been taking more practical steps to reduce the volume of items sent out. The advent of high-speed, colour digital printing has marked a renaissance for the industry as campaigns can be more targeted through personalised printing, resulting in fewer mail packs being sent out and better response rates for clients.

As a result of more targeted direct mail, the quantity of direct mail being sent out by businesses is around 88% of that of three years ago according to the DMA. Nick Dixon, chief executive of Lateral Group, a direct marketing company, says that, aside from the environmental benefits, personalised mailings was the right thing to do commercially.

"Targeting is more cost-effective," he says. "If you use data at the heart of your campaign, you will get a better response. In addition, using traditional suppression services to make sure that you are not sending mail to old addresses, you can produce significant cost savings and a return on investment."

At the same time as direct mail providers are beginning to focus on reducing their environmental impact, more data on the true footprint of direct mail is emerging. Quantifying the environmental impact of a direct mail shot against that of an internet campaign is almost impossible as there are no universally accepted statistics to support any claim. However, the figures that are available challenge public perception both in the higher than expected impact of an online mail shot and the lower figures for the impact of direct mail.

Currently, according to CEPI, direct mail accounts for 4% of the UK's total paper usage and about 2% of total annual household waste, around a third of that generated by a weekly Sunday newspaper.

Impact on context
In addition, it may not be the great polluter that many think it to be. According to a study released in June last year by Pitney Bowes entitled The Environmental Impact of Mail: A Baseline, the median amount of CO2 emissions per letter is 17.9 grams for the postal process, while the design, production of materials and production of the mail piece is around 0.9-1.3 grams of CO2 per gram of paper. So, assuming the average direct mail pack is around 40g - 50g, the total CO2 emissions from an individual direct mail shot from design to delivery is at most 82.9g. 

To put that in perspective, taking the same grammage of CO2 per letter, having a two minute shower emits the same amount of CO2 as 20 direct mail shots.

Quantifying the environmental impact of an electronic mail shot is more difficult. Mark Line, an environmental consultant at Two Tomorrows, says: "The big problem is how to make a comparison. Where do you draw the boundary for your analysis and which assumptions do you make? There are hidden environmental costs associated with internet infrastructure (primarily cooling of data warehouses) and the industry has flown under the radar until recently."

According to consultancy carbonfootprint.com, running your computer for an hour emits between 40g and 80g of CO2. Meanwhile, McAfee has claimed that the average emission associated with a single email message is 0.3 grams of CO2 - 52% of that is the opening and viewing of the message. When you consider that, with many items of electronic direct mail the recipient will print out the message on their home computer and that many more messages must be sent out to get the same level of response, it is clear that online communication is not a ‘green' form of marketing at all.

Going forward
That said, there is still more for the direct mail industry to do. Not least, to make the public aware of the true environmental impact of direct mail. A recent study by Lateral Group and print giant Polestar found that only 11% of inserts carry a recycled logo or environmental message. This is despite the fact that, according to the Confederation of Paper Industries, 95% of all paper used in direct mail is recycled.

"I think the public view of the relative environmental impact of DM is incorrect," believes Line. "However, so much DM is unwanted. It's going to be hard to persuade the public that the industry is an environmental good guy. It is better to substantiate the claim that it is a responsible industry that is keen to improve, seeking better data and raising valid questions about the presumed virtues of the alternatives."

Dixon, who has helped to launch greendm.co.uk, a site where direct mailers can calculate their carbon footprint, says that there is a risk that, if the industry does not show it is conforming to best practice, it could face an automatic opt-out ruling. That would see individuals automatically opted out of receiving direct mail and having to put their name on a register to receive it. With legislation already passed in Germany to that effect, it has never been more important to promote direct mail's environmental responsibility.

While an automatic opt-out would be welcomed by Hackney Council, it would be a disaster for an industry that contributes £43.7bn to the economy each year and employs more than 885,000 people, driving around 9% of total UK consumer spending. It would also reflect the deep misunderstanding about the environmental impact of direct mail.

PAS 2020

The standard, which was launched by the DMA to prove that the industry is self-regulating, establishes a set of environmental objectives, performance levels and indicators.
There are three levels for users - introductory, intermediate and
advanced - with increasingly challenging requirements.
PAS 2020 covers:
?     Campaign planning
?     File suppression and data cleaning
?     Choice of materials
?     Printing (including ink coverage and avoidance of laminates and UV varnishes)
?     Distribution
?     The use of ‘call to recycle’ messages on all appropriate marketing materials