Every summer (and sometimes in between) I work for the mail service. I get almost always the day shift, which means that I deal with exactly the stuff you (and a whole lot of other people, including yours truly) find so annoying: catalogues, ads, you name it. And I must say that it's really amazing, or actually absurd, to see so much mail leave the building which is so blatantly bound for the bin. Of course, after some time you stop looking at the stuff save for the ZIP code, but still it's virtually the same every day, every week, every year. I don't complain about it - in fact, I'm really glad I can work there to earn some dearly needed money, and for a few weeks it's actually a nice break from studying. On the other hand, some of the people who work there regularly said that things really have changed - a few years before, there has been much more "proper" mail and less junk, as they say. That's when I always think that it's such non-electronic spam mail now that wins their bread.
I just wonder: If you don't want your mailbox to be stuffed with junk, can't you simply put a "no ads please" sticker on it? Over here, you actually don't get unadressed mail (the delivery people actually keep track of what people don't want that), but if your name is on it, there's nothing you can do.
And the figure of the day: Only 3% (yes, three) of all the people who get some sort of mail ads actually decide to buy something.
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