Unnecessary waste of paper

When I bought my first house, an end terrace. It had an access path running past the side of the house to a housing estate situated behind the terrace. At some point probably in the mid twenties the local council had installed a street light on the path. However due to the narrow width they were unable to use a standard lamp post so it was fastened to the exterior of my house wall. They set up a payment as "rent" on the patch of wall at one shilling and sixpence (7.5 pence) per year. In the twenties this would have probably been enough for an evening in the pub but by the time I moved in it was not worth having. However every year I received a first class stamped envelope complete with a typed account letter and a hand written cheque to the value of 7.5 p signed by the borough treasurer, the accounts dept and the official who had raised the cheque in the first place. What this must have cost the local council I don't know but I would have settled for a small one off payment. I had one of the cheques in a frame in the hallway as a talking point for many years. I would have been embarrassed to present it to the bank.

I just use the back of unwanted paper to mark measurements on for marking out.

I too get the threatening letters from the Beeb. I feel sorry for the postman having to come all the way to the end of the road and up my overgrown path in the rain when there is no other post. I told him he didn't need to bother but he's obliged to deliver all the crap no matter what.
Trouble is all the junk mail is on glossy paper that's not nearly as good for lighting the fire. I have to get proper newspaper off a friend who is an avid daily newspaper reader. I must stockpile some as I need about 300 sheets a year for the rest of my life.

Probably over 15 years ago I had a conversation with one of our delivery men who once had been the area rep. for Wiggins Teap, one of the paper companies, and he told me that far from being the end of that industry, increasing computer use would help it to flourish. It seems that he is right and what seems to happen is that 'operatives' just do what computer says, they don't have either the time nor inclination to notice whether or not the automatically generated letter(s) is needed. Automated systems make the problem worse because there isn't a human who you can talk to about it, unless of course you want to dial what is laughingly called Customer Services and spend an increasing amount of one's remaining time on Earth 'on hold' and listening to Vivaldi or Clannad or some other boring synthetic 'pop' track on an endless loop. My collection of threatening letters automatically generated twice/thrice a month for the past 20 years by the TV Licence Gestapo is now over a foot high since I gave up trying to get them to stop. As someone has said earlier, this and all the other garbage mail helps to keep our posties and refuse/recycling collectors in work and even if most of the junk is unburnable glossy stuff, there's usually an envelope or two good for firelighting ( after being used for design doodles in the workshop- - - two birds/one stone and all that)

Trevor.