All of us at New American Dream eagerly await the launch of CatalogChoice.org, a site that will be a wonderful complement to all the tools for reducing junk mail currently posted on the Center For New American Dream site.
Currently, there are resources that folks can use to tell ad mailers to stop selling their names or to tell legislators to give citizens more control over their mailboxes, but there isn’t a tool to let folks say “this annoying catalog comes five times a month, make it stop!” or “I kinda like this catalog and want to keep receiving it.” Once CatalogChoice.org launches, citizens will have that very tool.
CatalogChoice.org will improve Americans’ quality of life but it will also help the planet. In 2005, 5.8 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 450,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Less than 36% of this ad mail was recycled.
And to make matters worse, citizens and local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to collect and dispose of all the bulk mail that doesn’t get recycled. Fortunately, thanks to CatalogChoice.org, Americans will have more power to decide what mail they want to receive – and we’ll all reap the benefits of that.
