How the Dutch came up with a simple solution to unwanted advertising in their mailboxes

I have been in Utrecht for a few days, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands and a very pleasant place to spend some time, given that the majority of its beautiful historic center is closed or heavily restricted to cars — as all city centers should be.

Walking through a Dutch city, the first thing that catches your attention is the omnipresence of the bicycle, which seems to be used for just about everything. It takes a little while to get used to looking left right and left again before crossing a road, but fortunately, nobody has forced bikes to issue any warning noise other than the little bell they carry.

Another thing that catches the attention when walking around the city are the stickers, like the ones above, pasted on practically every mailbox: the idea being to give residents a say in what is posted through their door, for example unaddressed advertising brochures and magazines. More information can be found here (link in Dutch), as well as the stickers. I imagine there are others, because I have seen varied formats, although they all have the NO/NO or NO/YES in large letters in orange or green.

A logical opt-out system and one that judging by its popularity works very well. Amsterdam has gone a step further and instead of an…