by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

In Montreal it's assumed that you welcome pizza menus, flyers and every variety of un-addressed paper junk advertisements landing on your front stoop - unless your door is adorned with a special anti-junk-mail sticker. But many who don't have the sticker end up angered by the fast-growing pile of unsolicited ads.

"We've had a lot of complaints, particularly since the arrival of the third phone book delivered to people's houses," says Robert Perreault, director of the Regional Environment Council of Montreal. "People are starting to react to receiving all this paper." Perreault's gang, along with Greenpeace, Equiterre and Option consommateurs, launched an awareness kick last month against unsolicited to-your-door advertising.

Perreault says that a variety of solutions to the paper pile-ups are being considered, including one that would ban deliveries to unmarked homes. "We're thinking that the burden should be on those who want the ads to put up a sticker," he says. "Those who want such deliveries would have to put up a sticker rather than those who don't."

The province is also getting snippy towards municipalities about their recycling efforts. Quebec government policy aims at recycling 65 per cent of all recyclable goods, and Perreault says Montreal is only recycling 17 per cent. Nevertheless, the city pays about $1-million a year to recycle junk mail, adds Perreault, who considers the 900,000 Publi-Sacs distributed weekly to be a particular burden. "That alone represents over 45-million plastic bags a year on the island, and it takes 250 to 400 years for a plastic bag to decompose," he says.

Plateau Borough Mayor Helen Fotopulos says that the ads often go straight into the bin. "When you do door-to-door in any neighbourhood, you notice that many of the Publi-Sacs are in the recycling bins without even being opened," she says. She notes that some accept the entire bag just to get the community newspaper bundled into the package, but she says that a simple call to the newspaper will usually get it delivered separately, without the entire bag o' flyers.

A spokesman for Canada's Daily Newspaper Association says members enjoyed an ad boom after October 1996, when the feds ordered Canada Post to stop delivering un-addressed junk mail. Canada Post still delivers unsolicited mail, but only those with the name and address of the occupant on them. Benjamin Grégoire of the Éco-quartier Jeanne-Mance et Mile-End speculates that to-your-door ad distributors might use this to get around future restrictions. "What risks happening is that the junk mailers will put an address on them and then Canada Post will be obliged to bring it to people's doors," he says.

Grégoire says that people are invariably thrilled when they learn that unsolicited deliveries can be stopped. "They come here every day and are really happy to learn that such a sticker exists," he says. For every sticker they give out, Éco-quartier informs Transcontinental, the company that prints and distributes the Publi-Sac, in the aim of getting them to actually print one less package. Officials at Transcontinental didn't return phone requests to comment on the issue.

Call 872-1111 or visit your local borough hall to obtain an anti-junk mail sticker.