New service helps curb catalogs

It's the time of year mailmen dread, as just about every day brings stacks and stacks of holiday gift catalogs. If you're looking to stem the tide of catalogs in your mailbox, Catalog Choice, a new service developed by the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Ecology Center, can help. The online service lets you request that merchants remove you from their catalog mailing lists.  A  recent article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel quotes April Smith, a spokeswoman for Catalog Choice, who said that so far all the merchants they have contacted, including L.L. Bean, Lands' End and Lillian Vernon, have said they will honor the stop requests. The article also cites a statistic from  Resource Information Systems Inc., which claims that American households receive an average of 110 catalogs a year. The overall damage to the environment to produce the catalogs adds up to the emissions of 2 million cars, according to Environmental Defense. Unfortunately it may be too late to stop your catalogs this holiday season, since it generally takes four to 10 weeks for the service to take effect. But there's no time like the present if you want a green Christmas next year.