If you’ve been following @loveclapham on Twitter you’ll know how annoyed I’m getting with the Wandsworth Guardian. I have a No Junk Mail sticker on my letter box, yet despite this and repeated requests to the newspaper to stop they are still ignoring my sticker and shoving their paper through my door. What’s worse is that it’s a Wandsworth borough newspaper and I couldn’t be further into the Lambeth end of Clapham if I tried. Since moving to Clapham North I’ve received one of these newspapers a week amounting to over 60 papers that have gone straight in the recycling bin. While some people may read it, I’d imagine others don’t want it. The same of all papers forced on people in this way. It’s a waste of money for the companies advertising in it and bad for the environment.

If I want to read their news I will visit their website or pick up a copy from a shop that distributes it. I do not want publications or any junk mail I haven’t asked for forced into my property. It’s an abuse of my home.

I want to support local businesses and I want to see the Wandsworth Guardian continue to grow, but it has to respect the wishes of the people it’s trying to represent. I don’t mind advertising in magazines and newspapers I choose to pick up, but I do if it’s supporting a newspaper conducting bad practice.

My recommendations for these newspapers are simple:

1. Immediately tell your distributors to stop posting these unwanted papers through letterboxes with ‘No Junk Mail’ stickers
2. Consider a better model where you offer your paper in shops instead of forcing it on people. You may have a smaller distribution but at least advertisers will know every one sold is being read rather than thrown away. Also, you won’t be damaging the environmant.
3. Focus more on your websites, they are far more important (ask me for help! I know a thing or two about building online businesses!)

This is the list of local businesses abusing Clapham residents’ homes by ignoring people’s no junk mail stickers – which is completely unacceptable. All the businesses have to do is ask their leaflet delivery person to stop. Until then, the businesses will be listed here on LoveClapham, a site that has thousands of local residents reading it each week. And this is just the beginning of our Name & Shame Junk Mail Campaign, our messaging will get stronger. We recommend Clapham residents boycott these businesses completely until they stop. 

Businesses abusing local residents’ homes are:

1. 5 Star Building Construction
2. Curry Leaves takeaway, 103 Falcon Road
3. New Dewaniam, 225a Camberwell New Road
4. Pizza Valley takeaway, 316 Battersea Park Road
5. Plant Pizza takeaway, 155 Battersea High Street
6. Poppadom takeaway, 219 Camberwell Road
7. Wandsworth Guardian local newspaper

As no one else has done anything about this, Love Clapham has created a three step pro-active plan to tackling Clapham’s junk mail problem including printing ‘NO JUNK MAIL’ stickers out of our own pocket, and they aren’t cheap! If you would like a free sticker, email in with your name and address. Otherwise we’ll be giving the stickers out for free in Clapham over the coming weeks, so follow us on twitter @loveclapham to receive alerts of where and when this will be (they look better in real life… I stuck mine on slightly wonky).

One of the biggest problems in Clapham is the large amount of junk mail that gets stuffed through our letter boxes every single day, and by ‘junk mail’ I mean unsolicited mail like leaflets, local newspapers and magazines. We need to send a message to the delivery companies that this is unacceptable, especially if they ignore stickers like the one above. The only way to do this is if the businesses buying mass flyer deliveries insist it no longer happens. By obliterating junk mail we’re helping all of us, the environment and local businesses by cutting out the junk that annoys people – surely no business wants to annoy customers?!

Name & Shame Campaign

If you have a junk mail problem, follow our 3 step guide to junk mail destruction…

Let's make this a thing of the past...

Back in April Love Clapham wrote about the utterly ridiculous amount of leaflets Clapham residents have to fight their way through to get out of the door in the morning. Now this site is getting thousands of visitors from Clapham a week we think it’s time to take action! This abuse of people’s houses must STOP.

Love Clapham HQ finds it all bloomin’ annoying beyond belief – the other day I had to literally dig my way through piles of takeaway leaflets which all went in an orange recycling bag unread. Not only is it a pain to pick up and throw away these leaflets every day, it’s a waste of paper, a waste of local business’ time and giving local businesses that do this a very bad name.

We asked some people on our Twitter feed what they thought and these were some of the responses:

@hypothesiseit’s out of control at my house! I filled an entire recycling sack with it the other day!

@tri5tanyeah, its shocking, even the “no junk mail” sticker doesn’t work all the time

@LianneWals We have a recycling bin by the door that all the leaflets go straight into

What Love Clapham is proposing is for Clapham residents to store up all of the trash that comes through letter boxes in an orange recycling bag, and then we can deliver it all back to the companies that distribute them in the first place. If they can violate our doors, we can post it back to them!

Following this admittedly drama queen style diva protest, we can ask them to stop or at least reduce the amount of junk coming through Clapham residents’ doors. These companies can also circulate ‘no junk mail’ stickers for all residents to use if they so wish.

If you think this is a good plan and want to take part, or think we should do something else, please leave a comment below.