Junk-mailers to get own medicine — fines in letterbox

The Wellington City Council wants to crack down on unwanted junk mail by introducing a new bylaw empowering officers to dish out fines.

The new rules would give legitimacy to people’s “no junk mail” signs.

Auckland Council has never prosecuted or fined anyone over junk mail in a similar bylaw.

But Wellington waste minimisation portfolio leader councillor

Laurie Foon said it was the start of sending a message to junk mail producers that “we don’t want it anymore”.

A council report said unaddressed mail resulted in littering, waste and public nuisance.

The bylaw would make it an offence to distribute unaddressed mail to letterboxes that had “no circulars”, “no junk mail” and “addressed mail only” notices.

Exemptions include public notices from any government party or local authority, community newsletters, political party material, and communications or fundraising material from community groups and charities.

Breaches would be enforced with fines of up to $400 issued under the Litter Act 1979 or prosecution.

But there’s almost no precedent of councils going to those lengths under a bylaw.

That’s because a fine can only be issued if a pamphlet lands on the ground, making it litter, and it can be difficult to prove who dropped what.

Auckland City introduced a similar bylaw in 2006 making it an offence for companies to place unsolicited advertising material into letterboxes that were already full or clearly marked “no junk mail”. But since, the council has never issued fines for littering or pursued any court prosecutions.

Auckland councillor Linda Cooper said such measures were a last resort but were necessary to have “if things get really bad”.

“Quite often people have purposely taken their mail and then they just throw anything they don’t want onto the ground and it escapes onto the road, I’ve seen it so many times.”

Foon said if Wellington’s bylaw was passed, the region’s mayors would write to stakeholders in the industry to ask them whether they really needed to produce junk mail.

“The bylaw is one of many ways where we’re almost starting to push back on the system that is just creating tonnes and tonnes of waste for our landfill.”