550,000 tones of direct mail were posted in the UK last year. With a multiple of 17 trees per one ton of paper, we can conclude, in excess of nine million trees were cut down, pulped and distributed into our letter boxes as 21 billion individual pieces of junk mail.. This excludes hand delivered items, such as free newspapers.

In the UK, unless you have ticked column six on your electoral register, your details will be sold by your district council. And the price is a steal. It costs just £20 for the register and then only £1.50 per thousand entries, valuing your personal data at just over .15 of a penny. The full register, which you have no choice of not being on, is available at the same price. The full register can only be used for a few defined purposes. One of these defined purposes, is to help establish a persons credit status, by credit reference agencies.

The fact I'm not on the edited register and still receive junk mail offering me credit cards, personally addressed to me, does make me wonder where these financial institutions acquired my info.

However, with identity theft in the UK reported to cost £1.7billion, the thing that really rankles me about it is that I have to individually shred the addressed junk mail with a household shredder. Not having the time to do this during the week, it becomes an incredibly annoying and unpaid weekend chore. At least with the free newspapers I can pick them up off the floor and put them straight into the recycle bin.

Some days you can feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of sales and marketing you can't seem to avoid. Everything is vying to grab your attention, headlines, bill boards, junk mail, phone calls from mobile phone companies, door to door salesmen, the Kleeneze catalogue, roofers, meter readers... and did I mention email? Don't get me started....