get rid of catalogs, part 2

Two years ago I wrote a post, kick the catalog habit, which has turned out to be one my most popular. I provided some motivation:

17 billion catalogs are mailed annually in the U.S., <5% contain post-consumer recycled material, and most get at least some of their virgin fiber from the boreal forest.

I included the customer service numbers and web sites to many merchants likely to be patronized by readers of this blog so people could quit getting catalogs. It was highly effective for me; I get very few catalogs any more ( but see footnote). And while I think stopping this deluge of paper is well worth it, it does take effort.

Today the New York Times had a piece about a new service called Catalog Choice. It's free (unlike some similar fee-based services) and developed by the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Ecology Center. Sign up, log in, check off the catalogs you receive and include the customer number, and they do the rest.

Do it now! Since catalog mailings are prepared well in advance, it often takes a month or so so stop them. But with prompt action, you may be able to staunch the holiday flow of dead trees to your mailbox.

Footnote: I have had to make more than one request to a few merchants to get myself off their mailing lists. The worst offender, which I have yet to extract myself from, is Linensource. I thought I had been successful when I got yet another catalog, addressed to my dead mother. My mother died 7 years ago, was in a nursing home for 4 years before that, and never lived at my address.  How did that happen?? I was so pissed off I wrote them a nasty email. No more catalogs to mom, but more to me!  Here is my small bit of revenge: Don't buy anything from this crappy company.

Comments

[Mary Carlson]

Hi - thanks for the post. I am one of thousands who, on average, gets at least one or two unwanted catalogs every day. Such a nuisance and waste of natural resources. I went to CatalogChoice's website. It was very easy to sign up; now I hope this really works.

[Georgia]

About a month ago I cancelled most of the catalogues I receive. At that time I did not have a copy of each catalogue. I'll you use the Catalog Choice service for the remaining merchants. Thanks for the information!

[ellen]

The other side of the story - some of us actually enjoy catalogues and HATE stores. I do all my buying from catalogues (I don't buy from online sites except for things like books or other products that are standardized...for clothing or jewelry, websites are awkward and take way too long to search and to load photos and often don't work at all). So is my use of the paper needed for catalogues worse then the gas usage and pollution that go along with driving from mall-to-mall or store-to-store? I don't think so. I do minimize the waste by making sure that they don't send me duplicates and by sharing them with friends or by recycling. I think catalogues are a waste if you don't use them, but if they do, they are probably no more harmful than other forms of shopping.