Junk mail has long bothered householders who have to contend with countless advertorial magazines and leaflets stuffed in their letter boxes.
But the vast amounts of leaflets are also an environmental problem, and the government wants to do something about it.
Environment Minister Leo Brincat yesterday rolled out a public consultation exercise soliciting ideas to tackle the issue of junk mail.
“The government is ap-proaching the issue with an open mind,” he said in the presence of representatives from the commercial community.
The move forms part of the Waste Management Plan 2014-2020. This plan had included the suggestion to create a “corporate sticker” that could be affixed to letterboxes asking distributors to refrain from depositing such mail.
A Budget initiative in 2009 to levy a tax on unsolicited printed material had to be scrapped after stiff opposition by industry players.
The eco-contribution would have amounted to 1c for every 80g of magazines and leaflets distributed for commercial purposes in newspapers and door-to-door when more than half their content was adverts or promotional messages.
Mr Brincat would not commit the government to re-introducing a tax, insisting he did not want to undermine the consultation exercise.
However, he insisted a balance had to be found between environmental concerns created by the volumes of waste generated through junk mail and jobs in the printing, advertising and distribution industries.
Representatives of the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises – GRTU and the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry present for the launch, said care had to be taken not to render industry uncompetitive by imposing added tax burdens.
In recent years, unsolicited mail often made people hot under the collar.
In February 2013, schoolchildren attending the Young People’s Environmental Summit took politicians to task over the large amount of general election junk mail.
They said 290 students from one school had collected 71 kilos of junk mail over a single weekend.
The students had also asked politicians whether they were aware of the amount of trees that had been destroyed to print the material.
The consultation process will last two months and will be followed by meetings with stakeholders.