How to stop getting catalogs in the mail

Along the same lines as my previous post about phone books, another huge source of paper waste and energy to deliver is getting catalogs in the mail. We all get a bunch of catalogs that we probably don't care about in the mail. If you're like me, most of them go straight into the recycling bin without even looking at them. While recycling them is certainly better than throwing them in the trash, the much better approach is to not get the catalogs at all. The environmental benefit of not getting a catalog versus recycling is many times better than the difference for recycling versus throwing out. But no one wants to spend the time to call up each place that you're getting a catalog from to request to be removed from their distribution list.

However, I found out about a really cool web site called Catalog Choice where you can find who you're getting a catalog from, and in two clicks request to stop getting their catalog. Catalog Choice takes care of the rest. There are a huge number of companies that are already honoring their requests, and as the site grows more and more companies will honor their requests. I would highly recommend this site to everyone, the address is http://www.catalogchoice.org/. Note that when you find a company to request removal from, you need to enter a customer number or catalog number in. The site says that it's optional, but every place that I've tried without putting this number in shows that it's been rejected, and the ones where I put this number in are all processing or removed. You can find this number on the back of the catalog above your mailing address typically.