Lately, I’ve been getting more and more shitty fliers stuck on my windshield. And they fliers themselves are getting worse. They used to be business-card sized, and then they were postcard-sized. Now we’ve graduated to 8.5×11. It’s bad enough that I get all the junk mail I do — now I have to recycle shit from my car, too?
I know I live on an urban block, and that some things are just unavoidable when you’re in the city. But does ANY company actually benefit from this practice? Personally, I get so frustrated with soggy, wet trash being stuck on my vehicle that I wind up making a mental note to never ever contact that pest control company, or attend that reggae music festival, or whatever other form of boycotting is appropriate.
I’ve thought about putting a small sticker on my dash that says “Please don’t leave your trash/fliers here”, but I’m not sure it’d do any good. (I figure if someone’s sticking paper under every windshield on the block, they’re either paid to do so and gonna ignore me, or asshole enough to not care about my request.)
Seriously, I wish this were illegal, so I could report these companies for environmentally unfriendly marketing practices. Hm, now that I think of it, maybe there IS something out there that would deter this. Perhaps this can be a practice test for some law student pal of mine!
First Amendment.
Heh, fair enough. But, I mean, anti-spam laws went into effect — maybe anti-B2C-littering laws can too? Maybe?
Commercial speech is less protected, certainly, but it can’t be stopped. Anti-spam laws and the Do Not Call registry rely on an opt-out system. I suppose a do-not-flier patch, similar to your note, could work. It wouldn’t necessary stop religious or political fliers, but it would put a dent in your pizza offers.
Just look at the fate of flyer bans in this city.
Well, you’ve convinced me to at least try sticking a polite but visible note on my dash. We’ll see how that works…