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A snap audit identified a large volume of unsolicited corporate junk mail coming into IAG's George Street Sydney mailroom. A program is now in place to reduce this environmental waste and reduce the direct cost in time from processing and handling corporate junk mail.

At home we call it junk mail - in corporate speak we call it 'unsolicited mail'.

Rick Zanella and his team in IAG's mailroom at 388 George Street noted that the volume of unsolicited mail flowing through their system was growing on a daily basis. On some occasions up to 70 copies of an individual promotional publication were coming in addressed to different people in IAG.

They knew there was a significant waste of time, paper and effort in the production of material going directly into waste bins, and also in handling and processing these items internally.

Rick and his team decided to take the initiative. The first step was to map the flow of unsolicited mail received over a 21 day period. This involved:

• Identifying potential unsolicited mail as it was received in the mailroom; and
• Stamping each piece of unsolicited mail with a stamp that asked the receiver to tick a box and return to the mailroom if they no longer wished to receive the mail item.

The next step was for the mailroom staff to telephone the mail distributors/senders and request that databases be adjusted so that the unsolicited mail is no longer sent.

From this initial process the mailroom logged 2,235 individual items with an average of five pages each. On an annual basis this means that around 134,000 unwanted sheets of paper are being sent to IAG staff at George Street each year.

On current calculations, if this unsolicited mail is eliminated, the mailroom team anticipate a bonus for the natural environment with a saving of 269 reams of paper or the equivalent of nine trees and 1.9 tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

Based on the success to date, mailroom staff are now stamping all incoming mail so people can identify all unwanted mail. The full impact will be reported in January 2008.

As the initiative gains momentum, the George Street mailroom team will advocate similar action in other mailrooms inside and outside IAG.

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