NEW YORK — The early warning signs of another holiday season are all around. Green and red decorations are showing up in stores. Ads are appearing for this year's crop of Christmas movies.
And America's mailboxes are bulging with catalogs.
But a new service, started by three environmental groups, is giving people a chance to gain some control over the postal flood tide that inundates them with billions of catalogs a year.
Called Catalog Choice, the online service allows people to compile a list of catalogs they do not want to receive. The service then contacts the retailers with a request to take the person's name off their mailing lists or makes a downloadable file available that merchants can feed into their mail database.
"Some people want to get some catalogs, but most people probably don't want to get all the catalogs they get from companies that they've never bought anything from," said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that created Catalog Choice.
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In addition to regular customers, retailers also send catalogs to people who have never ordered from them, in hopes of boosting Christmas sales.
Other relatively new organizations such as GreenDimes. com and 41Pounds.org offer opt-out services of one kind or another, but they charge up to $41. Catalog Choice is free.
The Direct Marketing Association, the industry trade group, runs a mail preference service that, for $1, will put a person's name on a do-not-mail list for three years. That prevents companies from adding that name to their lists, but it does not stop mail solicitations that a person is receiving.
But in less than a month and with little fanfare, more than 90,000 people have registered for Catalog Choice and logged more than 550,000 opt-out requests.
The service started with a list of about 600 catalog retailers, but visitors to the site have used the "suggest a retailer" feature to raise that to more than 1,000 retailers, according to executive director Chuck Teller, who runs Catalog Choice out of an office in Berkeley, Calif.
Until recently the only way to get off a catalog mailing list was to contact the merchant directly.
Other groups involved are the National Wildlife Federation and the Ecology Center, which runs Berkeley's curbside recycling program. Funding comes from three foundations.
ON STARNET: Follow news on the environment and wildlife at azstarnet.com/environment
Want to opt out?
Catalog Choice: This Web-based free service says it will allow users to stop getting catalogs from more than 1,000 retailers. www.catalogchoice.org
Mail Preference Service: Offered by the Direct Marketing Association, this service costs $1 and will keep your name from being placed on future mailing lists for three years, but it will not stop catalogs and other mail advertising materials you already receive. www.dmachoice.org/mps
GreenDimes: For $15, GreenDimes will send you customized, preprinted postcards to send to retailers to stop getting catalogs and junk mail. www.greendimes.com
41Pounds: This group contacts 20 to 30 direct-mail companies on your behalf to stop bulk mailings, and it also provides stamped, pre-addressed postcards to send to retailers that require signed opt-out requests from consumers. Part of the $41 fee goes to community and environmental organizations. www.41pounds.org
Chicago Tribune
