Wednesday, October 21, 2009

How To Save the Environment and Money Part I

Tired of making the effort to visit your mailbox (you know, the old school one) and it is stuffed to the brim with unwanted catalogs and other solicitations?  You can do something quite easily about it and help save some trees, too.  And, by stopping catalogs and other unwanted commercial mail, you can resist the temptation to buy something because it looks pretty.

There are a couple of sites that will take the pain out of canceling catalogs outright.  The first is Catalog Choice.  The process is pretty simple, but it does require registration.  When you get that next massive catalog that a certain trendy clothes retailer seems to send every other week, look on the back of the catalog for your customer number, key or source code.  Then, visit the Catalog Choice site, find your catalog, and enter that number into the field to stop it.  The process takes about a minute, but it might be a few weeks before your catalogs will stop being sent.  Alternatively, you can call the catalog company directly, but that can be a bit time consuming and you might have to listen to someone protest your cancellation to make you feel bad.

The other website is the Direct Marking Association Mail Preference.  It has a similar aim to Catalog Choice but it includes opting out of credit cards, magazines and catalogs.  You have to register, but I think it's worth it.  While you are at it, you might as well visit Do Not Call, the Government's effort at stopping unsolicited telephone marketing calls.  It's been around for several years, but worth a revisit.

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