November 13, 2000

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The Big Picture:
Not All Junk Mail Is Created Equal

Snail junk mail is much worse for the environment than spam

By Leon A. Kappelman

unk mail is a bad thing. Physical junk mail, that is--the unsolicited stream of advertisements and solicitations that clutter your mailbox at home and work. It's probably no more of a privacy intrusion than commercials on TV, but the junk on TV we can turn off or click away. The mailbox junk we have to physically handle, tossing it into the trash or shredding as prudence dictates.

Junk mail is also a blight upon the environment, because all that trash has to be hauled around using fossil fuels, then dumped into landfills or burned into the air. Preparing that junk for and delivering it to our mailboxes in the first place consumes lots of paper, fuel, human labor, and other precious resources.

Oh sure, junk mailers do pay for delivery to my mailbox, in the form of postage. But it's a free ride after that. My time, my shredder and the electricity to power it, the janitors and trash folks, landfill real estate, and the fuel, tires, and wear and tear on trucks and roads make up one big freebie for junk mailers. It's almost like having a license to steal.

No doubt about it: Junk mail is a really bad thing. But free speech and free enterprise are really good things, and thus we tolerate junk mail.

I don't know of anyone on a crusade to wipe out junk mail. No significant news or discussion groups, Web sites, legislative initiatives, or other major efforts are under way to outlaw, jail, deport, exile, or otherwise ostracize junk mailers. Surprisingly, even the environmental groups don't have junk mail on their radar screens.

So what's so different about junk E-mail, or "spam" as we often call it? Why the abundance of antispam groups, Web sites, legislative initiatives (in at least four states and Congress), faux-religious zealots, and even hate groups of a kind never before seen in IT circles?

It's true that spammers don't pay delivery costs in the sense that junk mailers do when they pay postage. But I'd bet a year's salary that we could figure out a way to pass some of those costs back to those companies sending the spam.

Other than that, spam is far less time consuming to dispose of, never needs shredding or hauling, and has a relatively negligible environmental impact.

Just like physical junk mail, spam is a bad thing. But in the big picture, junk E-mail is much less of a bad thing than physical junk mail. And, for the sake of free speech and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, I'll put up with both of them, as well as all those intrusive TV and radio commercials, billboards, and the rest.

The first time I wrote a column questioning some antispam efforts (see "Free Speech Vs. Free Markets,"), I found myself added to hundreds of junk E-mail lists, my employer was barraged with E-mail demanding my ouster (or at least the termination of my E-mail rights), and I became an object of hate for several antispammers of unparalleled closed-mindedness and rudeness.

On the other hand, as a result of that column I also met many thoughtful and concerned IT professionals who opened my eyes to some things about spam, while respectfully accepting that we didn't see eye-to-eye on everything.

The cost-transfer issues of spam should be addressed, and in so doing we will probably find a way to limit the volume of spam just as we do the volume of junk mail. Filtering can also help.

But for almost everyone, the cost of dealing with a piece of spam is far less than the cost of dealing with a piece of physical junk mail, and the environmental consequences of spam comparatively infinitesimal.

The profound difference in the reactions of many folks to junk mail when it appears on their screens as opposed to showing up in their mailboxes is perhaps because the physical closeness of the screen makes spam feel more personally intrusive.

Whatever the reason, there are causes far more worthy of our time and energies--illiteracy for one, improving our schools for another, and for all you IT folks out there, improving the quality of our systems and software.

Professor Leon A. Kappelman is director of the Information Systems Research Center in the College of Business Administration at the University of North Texas. You can reach him at kapp@unt.edu or on the Web at http://courses.unt.edu/kappelman/

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