Reply paid

Not much junk comes through the letter-box nowadays and it's no great chore to transfer it from the doormat into the paper recycling box. One item, however, I like to take a little more trouble with, and that is the business reply envelope which is often enclosed. This might be to send back your entry form and a cheque for £10 for a chance to win AUD$4,000,000 in Australian Lotto, or there might be two envelopes from Readers Digest, one for your answer saying "NO, I do not want to win £250,000 pounds but I would like a chance to win a rubbishy book about nutrition" and the other for "YES, I could make good use of £250,000 or £50,000 each year for life".

It is the work of a moment to cram these with as much waste material as they will hold: BNP leaflets, flyers from the local pizza joint, or those cardboard tubes you find at the centre of toilet rolls (from which, if the story is to be believed, you can build a glider which will get you out of Colditz Castle).

Then you just post them. This achieves two things: first, it brings a little additional revenue to our beleaguered Post Office—27.5p for each inland envelope, apparently, or 52p for the overseas ones—and second, the people who sent you the circular will be the poorer by that amount.

If a substantial proportion of the millions of addressees carried out this simple procedure, perhaps it would give pause to the senders of this rubbish.

So this is a practice to be commended; please tell all your friends.