Leslie Taylor

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There is only one time of year when a column about catalogs might matter to anyone.

You know, catalogs, those slick tomes -- hawking everything from fresh white truffles to sleep-sound machines -- that hang around the house, pages dog-eared to merchandise that seemed awfully nifty on the initial thumb-through.

But when the holiday season rolls around, the mailbox bulges with heavy, rubber band-bound bundles the weight and size of Duraflame firelogs.

And catalogs become more of a wasteful nuisance than enticement to shop by mail.

In late November, I started tracking the catalogs that crowded my mailbox. Last weekend, when the count reached 43, I folded up the legal-size sheet of paper and declared defeat. That tally didn't include the duplicates, like the three copies of the Ross-Simons jewelry catalog that appeared in my mailbox the same day.

Most sold products I wasn't remotely interested in. Plow & Hearth? Pajama Gram? Wine Country Gift Baskets?

They amounted to a huge waste of postage, time and, certainly, paper.

This holiday season, an online service that offers consumers catalog relief in a responsibly green way has gotten quite a bit of attention.

Catalog Choice is a free service launched in October by three environmental groups -- the Ecology Center, a nonprofit environmental organization; the National Wildlife Federation; and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their aim is to reduce the number of catalogs sent to American households every year -- an estimated 19 billion -- and in the course, save natural resources.

The groups estimate that those billions of catalogs consume 53 million trees and 3.6 million tons of paper. The contribution to global warming, the group calculates, is 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equal to the annual emissions of 2 million cars.

Catalog Choice allows people to gain some control over what reaches their mailboxes. They are asked to fill out a registration form on the service's Web site and find and decline catalogs they don't want. The service then contacts retailers on their behalf and asks that their names be removed from mailing lists.

Contact information is used by the service only for opt-out purposes.

There has been some pushback from the direct marketing industry, and from competing services that charge a fee to help people reduce mailbox clutter.

An executive vice president of the Direct Marketing Association, an industry trade group, told the Chicago Tribune that catalog shopping can have positive environmental impacts. Steve Berry said if Americans cut their number of trips to the mall by shopping through catalogs, it would decrease carbon emissions and reduce gasoline consumption.

Berry has a point, but surely he recognizes the environmentally irresponsible result of retailers flooding people's mailboxes with catalogs they neither requested nor have an interest in.

Catalog Choice maintains the service works to retailers' benefit by lowering distribution costs and helping them better target their market. Nearly 20 companies have signed on as merchant partners.

Those of us who grumble about the waste of paper, time and money that catalogs create should welcome, and applaud, Catalog Choice's efforts to control the flow of unwanted catalogs, for environmental good.

On the Net:

www.catalogchoice.org

Taylor is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.