Tip o’ the Day: Freedom From Catalogs
We've talked about Junk Mail before, but today we wanted to highlight a specific piece of junk mail: catalogs. These aren't actually junk, because at some point you probably requested it to arrive to your home. Of course, maybe you didn't request it: you could have purchased something online from the store and since then, catalogs just arrive. Even prior residents of your address might have gotten your address off the list.
The truth is, catalogs are obsolete. Everything we could ever want to see and more is online, and trees are getting chopped down so that we can flip through a couple of pages before pitching it in the trash.
It's easy to get off the list for catalogs. Each catalog has an (800) number listed on it for customer service. Just give that number a call and request to be removed from the mailing list. You'll want to make sure to have the catalog in front of you, because it may contain some codes that will make the process go even faster.
This doesn't just have to be at home, either. If you visit your parents' house and they've got catalogs piling up, offer to get them off of the lists. If your office receives tons of catalogs for exciting things like fax machines and toner cartridges, offer to get them off of those lists, as well. It's fast, it's simple, and it will make your life a lot less cluttered! I can hear the trees breathing sighs of relief as I type.
Rebecca says: I'm currently helping some friends get removed from some catalog mailing lists. I've done over 80 removals in the last week. I'm helping them, and I feel great about helping the environment!
Tags: catalog, catalogs, junk+mail
April 26th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
This is very important. I find that they are obsolete too. I do so much shopping online I haven’t looked at one in ages.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
All those you receive can be opted out so easily maybe, not so for other countries
April 26th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Thank you, once again, Rebecca, for an excellent tip. I will definitly make this part of my green-scheme! And good job on helping your friends get removed!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.
The proposed recent “Do not mail” is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?
I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!
The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”
We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.
http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html
Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel