Let's be honest, big business are not interested in saving the planet

Two examples.
Here in Australia, McDonalds are responsible for 84 million take away cups going into landfill every year.

Approximately 8.2 billion articles of unaddressed junk mail are produced and delivered to Australian households every year. As well as 650 million articles of addressed promotional mail.
This equates to approximately a quarter of a million tonnes of paper every year. 2.6 million trees are cut down each year to enable this junk mail to be delivered to our mailboxes. 80% of which goes straight into the bin unread.

Currently the onus is on the householder to stop the delivery of junk mail into their letter boxes by displaying "No Junk Mail Signage" most of which are ignored by the person making the delivery. Once again, the onus is on the household to report to the authorities the unlawful delivery of junk mail into signed letterboxes.

Businesses would lobby politicians if junk mail was to be made illegal. Suppression of trade, higher costs to businesses to only deliver "addressed mail". The printing industry would be "up in arms" as they generate huge profits from producing the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of junk mail destined for landfill.
No doubt, the weak politicians will listen to industry and not make physical junk mail illegal.
Gusman's rant for the day.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

No "recycling" services for this material? I don't know if the material MacDonalds uses is salvageable, though.

A lot of the nationally-distributed "junk mail" in Britain is enclosed within magazines rather than posted itself - I don't know if the publishers receive a fee for this. Local-business and charity leaflets continue to come either through the regular post or by own-deliveries.

These, plus old newspapers, magazines, thin card, cans and certain types of plastics go in the "recycling" bin; non-salvageable refuse in another.

I don't worry about the trees used provided new ones are planted - as crops - but are they?

Gusman · 61-69, M

@ArishMell We have recycling bins though a huge percentage of the population simply throw everything in the general waste bins. Or put general waste into the recycling bins, thus contaminating the contents, leading to the whole lot going to landfill.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Gusman Really that needs a lot of general education, and inculcating some sort of care in people; but I'd not like to suggest quite how.

I think in the UK it sort of developed fairly naturally; but we still have problems with things like people throwing old batteries into the landfill waste.

Only last week the crew of one refuse-collection lorry had to tip the entire load onto the street to pull out the batteries responsible for the fire - a few years ago there was a major fire at a depot ascribed to that cause.

We've also problems with fly-tipping and worse, organised gangs getting into waste-collection - they charge the householders to take the stuff the normal bin rounds don't collect, but tip it illegally.