We all take our responsibilities to the environment seriously. Yet as an industry we make a significant contribution to waste going to landfill and to carbon emissions. Our trade association – the DMA – has now made a voluntary agreement with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to reduce the amount of unwanted advertising material produced and to cut waste through greater recycling.

The key objectives set out in the voluntary agreement are that by y 2014 the direct marketing industry will have to achieve a 25% increase on the industry’s current use of suppression files, launch an ‘all-in-one’ consumer preference service for unaddressed mail, maintain public awareness of the consumer preference services and retain established direct mail recycling rates.

This is significant not only because we now have set targets for reducing waste but also makes it shows that self-regulation can indeed work.