Archive for the ‘Catalog Choice’ Category

Garbage collector gets the value of waste reduction

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

CleanScapes, a garbage-collection company in the Seattle area, is challenging five Seattle neighborhoods to reduce the amount of things stuffed into garbage, recycling and yard-waste bins. The winning neighborhood gets $50,000 for a project of its choosing.

According to this article in the Seattle Times:

“Rather than governments passing a law, we want to see what happens with a carrot,” said Chris Martin, president of CleanScapes, which took over the garbage collection in certain Seattle neighborhoods last March.

Ray Hoffman, head of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), said that every week Seattle loads 5,100 tons of garbage onto a mile-long double-stacked train heading to a dump in Oregon 300 miles away. Recycling is taken to Allied Waste in SoDo; yard waste is trucked to Cedar Grove in Maple Valley and Marysville.

The most significant thing people can do to shrink their garbage footprint is to buy a mulching lawn mower so residents don’t fill up their yard-waste containers with grass clippings, Martin said. Another huge step would be canceling junk mail, which fills recycling bins, he said.

Happy Holidays from Catalog Choice

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Happy Holidays from Catalog Choice!

How Green is Your Country?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

All the climate change chatter in Copenhagen has us wondering, how green is America, anyway?  Can we make a meaningful commitment to truly address the daunting issue of global warming?  Can we be a world leader?  As Americans, we tend to pride ourselves on our eco-friendly lifestyles, but when it comes to the task of planet-saving, there are many countries that rank higher than the United States.  We found this interesting blog on Green Diva Mom that lists the world’s most eco-friendly countries, based on several different surveys.  Many European and South American countries score as some of the world’s greenest.

Take Recycled Rates for example.  The Unites States does a pretty good job at 31.5% of waste recycled, but there is plenty of room for improvement.  We are outranked by six countries:

  • Switzerland, 52%
  • Austria, 49.7%
  • Germany, 48%
  • Netherlands, 46%
  • Norway, 40%
  • Sweden, 34%
  • United States, 31.5%

Take a look at the post to view some other interesting statistics and see how the United States compares to our fellow global citizens.

Naughty or Nice?

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

‘Tis the season!  And with all the holiday merriment comes lots of beautiful catalogs and other solicitations in the mailbox.  Catalog Choice has brought cheers of relief to many consumers inundated by catalogs they no longer wish to receive in the mail.  With the Christmas lights and eggnog, it’s also that time of year for Forest Ethics’ annual Naughty & Nice Scorecard on the Direct Mail Industry. Catalog mailers as well as companies in the financial sector were scored this year on four criteria related to paper sourcing, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper, recycled paper, and paper reduction efforts.

This year, there’s more Santa and less Grinch, with direct mail companies showing positive trends and improvement toward greener practices. Out of 21 companies evaluated, 11 made Santa’s “nice” list, nearly four times the number from 2006. We want to applaud those “nice” companies that also participate in Catalog Choice. Here’s some good cheer direct from the scorecard:

  • Patagonia once again stands atop the highest peaks, using the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled content in all the land.
  • REI knows that FSC is the only credible forest certification and is very merry to work with, just like any good camping buddy.
  • Crate & Barrel’s catalogs are now printed entirely on FSC-certified paper. Jingle all the way!
  • Dell has enhanced a strong paper policy with strong climate goals. Joy to the World.
  • Williams-Sonoma finishes what they start: their 99% FSC-certified content is now a perfect 100%. That’s a gift to all forests!
  • J.C. Penney vastly reduced its paper consumption by completely eliminating their big catalog! Sometimes less is so much more.

Improvements for next year?  We’d like to see Forest Ethics include participation and compliance with Catalog Choice as one it is “paper reduction” criteria.  We think that honoring consumer mail preferences is a big gift in our collective stocking and an important criteria for the Naughty & Nice Scorecard.

Find a recycling center near you …

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

I was on the Earth911.com site today and found this cool widget.  Enter your zip code and learn about where you can recycle all sorts of household waste.






Historical perspective on Catalogs

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Dave Skoloda writes an interesting article in the Onalaska – Holmen Courier-Life on life with the catalog decades ago when ther were only a handful of “books” and today when there ar 17 billion mailed in the US.  Dave’s article highlights that we have come to a point in history when enough is enough.  Americans are inundated with unwanted mail and there needs to be a way to control it.

Nothing against the USPS – we all want Universal Mail service.  We all recognize that advertising mail helps subsidize the 6 day a week delivery service we enjoy.  But should that come at the enviromental and solid waste cost associated with the production and disposal of 11 billion pounds of advertising mail every year?

Dave, as well as many others, don’t think that the unabated delivery of unwanted mail is sustainable.  That is why he points his readers to Catalog Choice as a way to control unwanted catalog mailers.  Get the ones you want.  Stop mailing us the rest.

We are not living in the days of just a few catalogs, so thankfully we have an effective opt-out service. Dave writes:

One year all the catalogs — Montgomery Ward, Sears-Roebuck, and Savage — came on the same day at Ben Logan’s farm. The mailman’s Model T Ford was sagging on its springs, Logan wrote. And the mailman said, “Come and get some of these cussed things out of here before my springs give out.”

The cussed things are still loading up our mailboxes, so the relatively simple ways to opt out are welcome now as they would have been to Logan’s mailman nearly a century ago.

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Go Green on Black Friday

Friday, November 27th, 2009

As the holiday shopping season shifts into full gear, we’d like to highlight a cool participating merchant. Uncommon Goods carries a fantastic line of gifts, many made from recycled materials. Here you’ll “find anything but ordinary” gifts for everyone on your list. The fine folks at Uncommon Goods are also collaborating with us in an effort to provide consumer choice and several options for going paperless. From stocking stuffers to splurges, you can shop for fun gifts from the comfort of your home through a variety of new digital tools.

In the mood to flip through a catalog? Check out their digital catalog.

Want to make a list and keep it on your desktop or personal homepage? The Uncommon Goods 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.

More Titles Participate in Catalog Choice

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Every month, we are pleased to welcome new companies and catalog titles to our service.  From seed catalogs to intimate apparel to great tea, here are more terrific brands that have joined Catalog Choice in recent months to honor your mail preferences.  Show your support by shopping with them online!

The Republic of Tea

Lady Grace Intimate Apparel

Cricket Catalog

Jackson & Perkins

Wayside Gardens

Park Seed Company

International Spy Museum

Nutri-Health

Harris Seeds

The Mailer needs more information … here is how it works

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

“Oops, I sent a request to Cheese Baseball Cards but forgot to include my last name.”  Don’t worry, we have you covered.  If a mailer needs more information to fulfill the opt-out request, they will send you an email to your Catalog Choice Account (using the unique Catalog Choice email address we create for each Member-Mailer combination).  We also know that privacy is an important concern for you.  That’s why Catalog Choice has developed an email system that allows you to communicate with mailers without using your personal email address.

Here is how it works.  Log into your Catalog Choice account.  All of your activity messages are shown right on your  “Dashboard”.  Messages that require action on your part are in the seciton highlighted in red.

Catalog Choice - Control the catalogs you receive in the mail

By selecting “Respond”, you can write a message to the mailer giving them the additional information requested.  We will track the status of your response the same way we track your original opt-out request.  You know the familiar “unconfirmed”, “delivered”, and “confirmed” labels.

Did you know that you can receive all the activity messages from a mailer directly to your personal email address?  Your email settings may be updated by going to My Profile.  You can access My Profile from the login strip at the top of the page or go to your “Dashboard” tab and select “My Profile”.

Catalog Choice - Control the catalogs you receive in the mail

Here is the magic part.  If the activity message is delivered to your personal email and you reply, the response will be sent to the mailer from your unique Catalog Choice email address as well.  So, when we say we never release your email address, we mean it.

Need proof that you sent them the information they requested?  Your response is automatically saved in your Catalog Choice account for future reference.

With the completion of the Needs More Information system, we have the most transparent, straight forward mail preference service in the Nation.  Catalog Choice is facilitating a round trip a communication between you and mailers to decrease the amount of unwanted mail that shows up in your mailbox!  And did we mention that we do this without releasing your email address?

Running in the cloud

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

After a lot of hard work, the Catalog Choice maintenance upgrade is up and running.  In an effort to save money and make our application more scalable (rapidly respond to increased traffic), we have moved to a “cloud computing” configuration.