Much of the paper used for the 20 billion (that’s right–billion with a ‘b’) catalogues that retailers mail us every year comes from Canada’s boreal forest.  The largest wilderness on the continent, this forest stretches from Newfoundland all the way to the Yukon.  Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the North Wind), this vast forest accounts for a quarter of the world’s forest lands and contains most of the world’s unfrozen freshwater.  And more than 300 bird species breed in the boreal forest.  This land also sequesters more than a trillion metric tons of carbon, more than any terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. 

     Sadly, much of this magnificent forest is being logged for catalogues and other paper products.  With 1.9 million acres of trees being cut every year, Audubon reports, the forest is diminishing rapidly.

     But we can help to protect this forest, also known as “North America’s Amazon,” and unclog our mailboxes of unwanted catalogues at the same time. 

     You can join the growing call for a postal version of the Do Not Call registry, which has enabled many people to remove their names from telephone solicitation lists.  To date, more than 78,000 people have signed an electronic petition asking Congress to create a Do Not Mail registry that would make it relatively easy for people to remove their names from mailing lists for catalogs and other junk mail they would rather not receive.

     To add  your name to the petition, visit www.catalogcutdown.org and sign up.  This website, a project of Forestethics, is set up in a fun format that offers a lot of information about the impact of junk mail on the environment.

     Since Congress won’t likely create a Do Not Mail registry within the next month, you can take action yourself to remove your name from particular catalog mailing lists.  At www.catalogchoice.org  you can name catalogs you no longer wish to receive.  The organization will contact the merchant on your behalf and request that you be removed from the mailing list. 

     But when I visited www.catalogchoice.org and named a catalog I currently get but would rather not, I was told that the merchant who sends out the catalog I named was not a participant in the program.  So it seems that for certain catalogs, the only way to remove your name, at least at this point, is to contact the retailer directly.–April Moore 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 10:24 am and is filed under Act now to save our beloved Earth!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.