A Royal Mail rubber band is a small formerly red (from 2004 to 2010) elastic loop used by the postal delivery service in the United Kingdom. In the course of its work, the Royal Mail consumes nearly 1 billion rubber bands per annum to tie together bundles of letters at sorting offices. In the 2000s, complaints about Royal Mail rubber bands littering the streets of Britain have gave rise to ongoing press interest in this minor cultural phenomenon. The bands ceased to be red in 2010, and are now standard elastic band brown.