Our team is hard at work processing your opt-out requests. So, we thought we would share with you how we are making this happen.

First, a little history. When we started developing Catalog Choice we knew that the best approach was to build a solution that would be easy for merchants to use. That meant allowing companies to obtain opt-out requests and feed the names directly into their mailing list process. After extensive research we developed a Merchant Account service that makes obtaining opt-out lists seamless for catalog companies.

At the same time, we realized that it is unreasonable to expect that all merchants will sign up for our service. Because we have an obligation to our members to fulfill their opt-out requests—and because we know most companies wish to honor these requests—we also developed a Merchant Notification service that automatically sends emails to the respective merchant for each individual who opts out of a catalog.

The Merchant Account service is a more cost-effective approach for catalog companies since it avoids transcribing names from email messages into do-not-mail lists. It goes without saying, if merchants find it difficult to transfer names, the adoption rate will be lower.

As we developed Catalog Choice last summer, we contacted several catalog companies and described our Merchant Service plan. At that time, merchants did not fully understand the benefit of our service and they wanted to take a wait and see approach before signing up.

Well the consumer has spoken and they want an easy way to choose what catalogs get into their mailbox. Three weeks into the launch of Catalog Choice, we have more than 80,000 consumers opting out of nearly 500,000 catalogs. With this kind of broad consumer support we expect that merchants would rather subscribe to our machine-readable service instead of continuing to be bombarded with opt-out email requests.

So this coming week, we will launch Catalog Choice for Merchants—the first hosted mail order catalog opt-out service for the industry. As with our consumer service, we’ve made this service free and easy to use. It is hard to argue with that price.

Merchants: We represent tens of thousands of customers. Some of these people no longer wish to receive your catalogs in the mail. Others receive duplicates and want to request only one catalog copy. Others just prefer to shop online. Claim your Merchant Account and we will deliver opt-out requests in a format that easily integrates with your mailing list management process.

In the weeks ahead we will identify the first 50 catalog companies that claim their merchant account. If you are a catalog company, you can contact us at Merchantservice@catalogchoice.org to make sure we have the correct contact information for you. Look for our email to your customer service department announcing your Merchant Account. Together, we can save natural resources and save money. We appreciate your participation in Catalog Choice!

In case you missed it, our colleague David Mizejewski, of NWF, describes the driving forces behind the popularity of Catalog Choice. Unlike other environmental efforts that confront industry, Catalog Choice is designed to work seamlessly with merchants. Contact us at Team (at) catalogchoice.org to inquire about setting up a merchant account.

Click here to view David’s interview - sorry about the pre-roll advertisement.

Watch this fantastic interview from CNN. Note that the ability to specify the frequency of catalog mailings is a feature that we are working on but is not available yet.

Catalogchoice.org has been live for less than two weeks and the response has been tremendous. We updated the site last week so that you can see how many registered accounts and the number of catalogs members have opted-out of. I will admit it - some times I just refresh my browser and watch the number climb. As of this moment, we have over 40,000 registered users and over 162,000 catalog title opt-out requests.

There are registered users from every State of the Union as well as Virgin Islands, U.S. Minor Outlying Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa.

Users are make good use of the Invite a Friend feature - over 15,000 invitations have been sent as of Friday morning.

The Catalog Choice Team is so pleased that so many of you are utilizing our free service. Together, we can preserve natural resources by opting-out of unwanted catalogs.

Our launch this morning is gathering steam.  We got great posts from the Daily Kos and TechCrunch.  Whether you read left wing political blogs like Daily Kos or follow the Web start-up world through TechCrunch, you will learn about our great new free service.

We did run into a bug when we got hit with lots of concurrent sign-up requests.  The bug is fixed, the sign-ups are flowing in and in a month or two, the catalogs will slow down.   If you ran into the sign-up bug, come on back.

Each year, 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers. That is 63 catalogs for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Sadly, most of these catalogs are unsolicited. Plus, all this mailbox clutter takes its toll on the environment. Catalog paper (3.6 million tons) adds up to 38 trillion BTUs, enough energy to power 1.2 million homes each year. It also produces 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions of two million cars.

Today, we’re pleased to launch the first free service that consumers can use to opt-out of catalogs. Now it is as easy to opt-out of a mail order catalog as it is to make a purchase.

We built the service with the best interest of merchants too. Merchants can request a free account (contact info (at) catalogchoice.org) that will allow them to obtain the list of opt-out requests in electronic format for their catalogs. The electronic file will make it easy to incorporate the consumers requests into the mailing list creation process.

If you have not signed up yet, hurry on over to the sign-up form and with a few clicks you can stop the waste. We have made it easy to invite all your friends. Once you have signed up, go to Invite a Friend and tell all your buddies about the service.

As you use the service, if you have any suggestions or questions, click the Contact Us link at the bottom of any page and your note will go directly to our customer service team.

Our software team, Makalumedia, has done a tremendous job at making the site fast and easy to use. Give it a try, we think you can opt-out for those unwanted catalogs in seconds. If only it was that easy to take out the recycling.

Today, we get to present Catalog Choice to hundreds of industry experts and catalog merchants at the Lenser Client Summit.  We will join Jeff Mendelsohn of New Leaf Paper on a panel titled Let’s Go Green. We are impressed by the foresight that Lenser has in presenting solutions like New Leaf and Catalog Choice to their customer base.