If you are a small business owner, you can add your office address to your existing Catalog Choice account.  To do this, go to your profile and add a new address.  Set the ‘nickname’ for this address to your company name and make sure you add your company name to the address profile.

If you work at a larger company and want to stop the flow of unwanted advertising mail at your office, create a new account dedicated to your office location.  You can add names of long lost employees that continue to get mail to your account.  We have kept the sign up form simply so Company Name does not appear on the sign up form.  After signing up, go to your profile, scroll down to the Address area and edit the address so you can add the Company Name.

This blog is designed for our Members to share stories about their efforts to reduce unwanted mail and go paperless.

You can share a story on the Member Blog by emailing the story to:

post@catalogchoice.posterous.com

The subject line of your email will be the title of the blog post.

Any photos you include in the email will be included in the blog post.

Print copies of our poster and “post” them at work, school, gym, community center, or wherever you think others will see it.  Thanks!
Click here to download the poster

You can view the Council’s discussion on the topic by viewing this video of the City Council meeting.  Click Resolution 31169 from the right hand side index or fast forward to 46:50 of the video.

What do you think?  We will follow the vote and let you know the outcome.  To learn more you can find the draft resolution here and all sorts of articles on the topic here.

Brampton Low Open Totes

$6.95 – $12.95

reg. $9.95 – $18.95

Eco-friendly totes in a sweater weave of twisted natural water hyacinth with a touch of rattan and a warm light brown lacquer finish. Handcrafted with sturdy metal frames, cutout handles and rounded corners. Two sizes nest when not in use.

Want to make a list of Crate & Barrel products and keep it on your desktop or personal homepage? The Crate & Barrel iCatalog holds their full product line in a compact, portable widget that lets you search for products, build lists and share your discoveries with friends.

Note: a portion of any purchase made through the iCatalog or the link in this blog post goes to support Catalog Choice.

At the Colima Linda apartment complex, which got started on the program a couple of months ago, as much as 50 percent of its trash has been diverted to recycling; A good start, but not yet on target if the City is to meet and exceed its diversion goals. Currently, the State of California requires local governments to reduce waste disposed in landfills by 50 percent.  In 2008, the City of San Diego achieved 64 percent diversion. City officials are striving to exceed that rate every year. This goal seems doable since about two-thirds of waste headed to the local landfill is recyclable. Go San Diego!

Better yet?  Stop the waste at the source and take actions like reducing unwanted mail through Catalog Choice! We’ll soon announce our expanded service addressing other forms of advertising mail to help you and your towns and cities meet waste reduction goals.

Create an account at Catalog Choice – it is a much more effective way to control junk mail.

Whenever you receive an unwanted catalog, rip off the back cover, recycle the rest and set the back cover next to your computer.  Next time you go online or at least once a week, login to your Catalog Choice account and enter your opt-out request.  It takes less then 30 seconds from start to finish.

If we all resolve to spend at least one minute setting our mail preferences every week, we will eliminate hundreds of pounds of unwanted mail.  Be part of the solution.

Bernd Heinrich, emeritus professor at the University of Vermont, wrote an excellent op-ed in the December 20th New York Times titled Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees.

Heinrich notes:

Part of the problem is the public misunderstanding of how forests and carbon relate. Trees are often called a “carbon sink” — implying that they will sop up carbon from the atmosphere for all eternity. This is not true: the carbon they take up when they are alive is released after they die, whether from natural causes or by the hand of man. The only true solution to achieving global “carbon balance” is to leave the fossil carbon where it is — underground.

Beyond that, planting more trees is decidedly not the same thing as saving our forests. Instead, planting trees invariably means using them as a sustainable crop, which leads not only to a continuous cycle of carbon releases, but also to the increased destruction of our natural environment.

The solution is to reduce the volume of natural resource consumption.  Catalog Choice is dedicated to providing a service that allows us, as a society, to reduce the volume of unwanted mail.