Clean Up Your Mailbox

I recently learned of a new free service called Catalog Choice. Run by The Ecology Center and endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, their mission is:

to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs.

They make it super easy to opt out of getting catalogs that you do not want. All you have to do is click on the company, provide your customer number (if you have it) and submit. They handle the rest and contact the company to get your address removed. What is also really nice is that they maintain a list of of the catalogs that you have opted out of so it makes it really easy to keep track.

I have been trying to reduce the number of catalogs that we receive but it is very time consuming, having to call each individual company, not to mention keeping track of which ones I have already called.

It looks as if the the Direct Marketing Association is not thrilled with what Catalog Choice is trying to do. Which seems counterintuitive to me. After all, why spend the money to send out a catalog to someone who does not want it?