“Free and green. Those are the goals of a pilot program launched today by the U.S. Postal Service that allows customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge.”

An innovative program was launched by the USPS in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego this week.  The program, in association with Clover Technologies Group, a nationally recognized company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics, provides pre-paid mailers that you can pick-up at the post office and use to recycle  small electronics and inkjet cartridges.

Read the entire press release here.

Today I learned that the City of Napa is using Catalog Choice to promote “precycling” to city residents.  You can read the entire article by Jill Decker over at the Napa Valley Register.

The article was prompted by a suggestion from Napa resident Lisa Jaynes.  What caught my attention was that Lisa learned about Catalog Choice when she saw a flyer for our site in her garbage bill.

The flyer went out earlier this year to about 26,000 Napa city and south county garbage customers, according to the city’s Napa Materials Diversion Administrator Kevin Miller.

“The city and county of Napa are true believers in waste prevention, sometimes called ‘precycling.’ In the case of unwanted junk mail, recycling is good (and certainly better than sending it to be buried in a landfill),” Miller said, “but avoiding the junk mail in the first (place) is much better for the environment.” It’s the reduce part of “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

An important point that Jill makes in the article is “the site (catalogchoice.org) promises not to share your personal information beyond what is needed to take you off their list.”  That’s right - We only send your personal information to the merchant to request that they remove you from their mailing list.  As part of the transmission of your information, we require that they not rent, sell or use your name for any other purpose.  This remains a voluntary process and we continue to see more and more merchants updating their systems to accommodate consumers’ mail preference requests.

Get a lot of unwanted mail? In 2005, more than 19 billion catalogs were mailed to American consumers – whether they wanted them or not — creating millions of tons of wasted paper and jamming millions of mailboxes full of unwanted catalogs.Many of those catalogs were not printed on environmentally-preferable papers.Catalogs represent a unique opportunity for significant, positive impacts on the environment. The U.S. direct mail advertising industry is comprised of approximately 3,750 businesses, including catalog companies. Unfortunately, the recycled content in catalog papers and recycling rates for catalogs are extremely low compared to other commonly used paper products such as newspapers. Among catalog companies surveyed in 2002, only 12% used recycled paper for their primary catalogs and 18% for their order forms. Fully two-thirds reported using no recycled paper at all. In addition, unlike other direct mail materials such as advertisements, the paper used for catalog production is both bleached and gloss coated, which can result in toxic chemicals released into the environment.Catalogers use over 3.6 million tons of paper each year, which translates to over 8 million tons of trees. By increasing recycled content and sourcing paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (the only credible standard for sustainable logging), catalogers could greatly decrease their negative environmental impact, cut air and water pollution, and decrease the amount of paper filling up landfills.In addition, it is estimated that 95-98% of catalogs go directly from the mailbox to the garbage or recycling can. Finally, discarded paper comprises the largest component of the municipal waste stream, due in part to the fact that catalogs and magazines have among the lowest recycling rates of all printed materials (possibly due to older recycling habits where glossy paper materials had to be separated from other paper products). Today, 34% of the discarded material in the municipal waste system is from paper and paperboard, and 50% of that gets recycled. That’s still a lot of paper going to waste!To learn more about the benefits of recycled paper, visit the Environmental Paper Network’s website at www.environmentalpaper.orgAnd to help catalogers reduce the amount of mail they send (and the natural resources they use), sign up at www.catalogchoice.orgPosted by:Laura HickeyNational Wildlife Federation