CatalogChoice.org: reducing paper waste

From their website:
Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to decide what gets in
your mailbox. Use it to reduce your mailbox clutter, while helping save
natural resources.

This is pretty cool! I just signed up today. I created a free account, listed our address and the names to which we receive snail mail. I then went through the rather extensive list of catalogs (using the search feature a time or two) and selected the various catalogs that the US Post Office delivers to our mailbox - and that we then deposit directly into the recycle bins. As Shirley and I were talking about it, we kept remembering more junk that comes to us. So now, ever so slowly over the coming months, the volume of junk mail that is delivered to us should diminish. The number of wasted trees will be reduced a little. A little less fuel will be wasted in the transport of the catalogs. And the companies who produce the catalogs will be wasting less money, since we don't buy from these catalogs anyway!

So lighten your load. Go sign up and reduce your junk mail.

Comments

[Barry in Portland]

Yeah, I saw the tail end of the piece about that service on Bill Moyers last night. It really is shocking the amount of stuff that goes directly into the recycle bin, before even entering the house. Maybe this will help.

[Kitty]

Hey Joe,

We have a similar thing in the UK - Mail Preference Service. From memory it is more of a blanket thing which removes your names & address from mailing lists which you haven't specifically requested to be on. We signed up a few years ago and the level of junk mail has gone way down. MPS has sister programmes for telephone preference and sms preference which has all-but stopped us getting any cold sales calls etc.

Sometimes I end up getting more than one copy of a company's or charity's catalogue because I have ordered something from them and entered my delivery address details slightly differently from how they are listed on their database (like put brackets round the apartment number or not putting brackets round the apartment number). It takes a little effort, but I call the company and get them to remove the duplicate entries so I only get one copy next time around.

Every little helps right? :-)