Should SingPost stop delivering letters?

MY APOLOGIES to arborists, but every two weeks, I make a disgruntled trek from my mailbox to the nearest rubbish bin. Directly from box to bin goes not just unsolicited flotsam – property agents’ fridge magnets and handyman’s flyers – but legitimate mail that I simply don’t need in hard copy, like dividend statements, utility bills and government missives.

Come next year, the Danes will be spared these mailbox-rubbish bin sojourns because Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, will no longer deliver letters. Instead, it will start phasing out the nation’s 1,500 post boxes this month and focus on delivering parcels.

This isn’t a seismic development – since the turn of the century, Denmark has seen a 90 per cent decline in letter volumes. Even so, those who prefer to send a ransom letter the old-fashioned way still can, since the nation’s letter market was opened up to private firms last year.