My article on Triple Pundit on Victoria's Secret catalogs that get greener

Here's an update on a new article I published yesterday on Triple Pundit on the progress Victoria's Secret catalogs made regarding the paper they're printed on - As of December 2009 the catalogs use of post-consumer waste (PCW) and FSC-certified paper rose to 88 percent from 23 percent in 2007. It is still a relatively wasteful product, but at least there is some effort to make it greener (thanks also to the great work of ForestEthics), which should be commended.

The article is entitled "Victoria’s Secret to Greener Catalogs". Here's the first part of the article:

If you’re receiving Victoria’s Secret catalogs there’s a good chance the paper they’re printed on will not be the part you’ll be most interested with. Yet, I’m sure even those who are more interested in the latest bra models will be happy to know that these catalogs, which for years were a symbol of unsustainability, are becoming more sustainable. Five years after making headlines for partnering with ForestEthics, Limited Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, reported last week that it has dramatically increased the use of post-consumer waste (PCW) and FSC-certified paper in their Victoria’s Secret catalogues – from 23 percent in 2007 to 88 percent by the end of 2009.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/victorias-secret-catalogs-getting-greener/

Links to other articles I wrote for Triple Pundit can be found at http://www.triplepundit.com/author/raz-godelnik/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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ForestEthics is releasing its annual Naughty / Nice list of companies in the direct mailing industry

An irritating byproduct of the holidays season is the growth in junk mail. So much waste of paper that in the best scenario will go directly to the recycling bin and in many cases will just end up in the landfill.

Some companies are better of course than the others, but how can we know who is good and who is bad?

Well, fortunately ForestEthics comes to our help (like they do every year) with their annual Direct Mail Industry Scorecard that grades companies according to their paper choices and the steps they're taking to minimize their direct mail's footprint. The report includes 3 grades: Nice, Checking Twice and Naughty. As you can imagine, naughty is the worst among the three.

The grades were given according to four criteria: whether or not Endangered Forests are cut to produce the company’s catalogs; whether the company uses Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper; the amount of post-consumer recycled content in the company’s direct mailings; and the company’s efforts to reduce overall paper consumption.

This is the forth year this scoreboard is published, so you can also compare the results to the last couple of years. And the results are definitely encouraging - there are more ‘nice’ companies (12 this year comparing to 10 last year) who are taking concrete steps to ensure that their paper choices don’t endanger precious wildlife, and don’t destroy intact Boreal Forest. The naughty list also got shorter with 5 companies this year comparing to 7 last year.

So, who's Nice? at the top of the list you'll find companies that you definitely expect to find there such as Patagonia (using the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled content in all the land) and Timberland (stopped printing catalogs altogether!). You can also find there some less expected names like Victoria's Secrets (I saw they got the same grade last year, so apparently it's not such a surprise). Also on the top of the list Macy’s/Bloomingdale’s who followed up their phase-out of Bloomingdales’ catalog by increasing post-consumer recycled content from 10% to 30%.

And who's on the bottom? five companies got the Naughty grade: Sears, Neiman Marcus, Eddie Bauer, Citi and Chase.

I was surprised to see Citi on the list, as they just recently won the "Most Innovative Bank in Climate Change" Award From The Banker Magazine, and on their press release about it you could read a quote from Sandip Sen, Head of Citi's Alternative Energy Group, saying "Citi has been a leader in environmental sustainability for eight years". Well, it seems like their Naughty grade is a result of the bank's refusal to reply to ForestEthics' questions. If the bank is a leader as it claims to be, I see no reason why it won't cooperate with ForestEethics and share its policy paper with them. I'm sure Mr. Sen would agree with me here.

Thanks to ForestEthics and the great job they're doing. I'm sure this report is not only a way to make companies' paper policies more transparent, but also an effective tool to pressure them to improve their practices, as we can see from the improved results presented this year.

The Direct Mail Industry Scorecard is available at http://forestethics.org/downloads/naughtynicelist2009_Ultimate.pdf (2008 scoreboard can be found here)

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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When economic constraints meet Planet Earth: HarperCollins' catalogs are going digital

One more time savings are meeting the environment: The HarperCollins Fall catalog is going paperless or in other words: no more printing and mailing physical catalogs. From now on, it's all digital.

And it actually has many advantages as Publishers Weekly reports (thanks to GalleyCat for the link!): "HC's digital catalogues, housed at www.harpercollinscatalogs.com, will, in addition to featuring the standard information in print catalogues, include reviews, interviews and promotional videos. The publisher is also promising that the online catalogues will be updated frequently, reflecting any evolving changes with the publication details or marketing efforts surrounding titles."

Again it's another win-win solution: interested parties get better and improved information, hence making the catalogs more effective, money is saved as there's no printing and mailing and of course the environment is benefiting from it. It's maybe even win-win-win :-)

Wonders how a digital catalog looks? check out www.harpercollinscatalogs.com (where you can also find the book, which you see it's cover above - The Road to Woodstock by Michael Lang)

And what about the rest of the publishers? Josh Marwell, president of sales at HC, is quoted on PW saying the new online catalogues mark the "next step in the evolution of how we bring our books to market." I believe he's right and it also applies to other publishers. Hence, my guestimation is that HarperCollins won't be alone for too long - such a move makes too much sense especially in these times. We'll follow it up and let you know if we were right or wrong here.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

Green Options - Catalog Waste Part 2: Making the Catalogs You Receive More Sustainable

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Robin Shreeves on September 1 on Sustainablog. Today's post is about catalogs and this time how to handle those you actually want.

Last week, I wrote about the paper waste associated with catalogs in Catalog Waste Part 1: NOW is the Time to Cancel Unwanted Catalogs and Stop Paper Waste. If you're receiving catalogs that you don't want, cancel them and seriously curb your paper consumption in one easy step.

But, what if you don't want to cancel all of the catalogs you receive? Sometimes, there are catalogs that you actually do use and want to continue receiving. Do you have to be content with receiving many, many copies of the catalog when one a year or one a season would suffice? Do you have to be content with the catalog companies using 100% virgin paper?

No, you don't. Here are some things you can do:

• Call the companies of the catalogs that you do wish to receive and tell them that you would only like to receive a certain number of mailings a year. Not all companies are set up to do this yet, but more and more companies are offering this option. If a company comes out with an "early fall catalog" and a "fall catalog" and a "late fall catalog" (this is common with clothing companies), most likely the items inside the catalog are the same, but the picture on the cover is different and the pages have been rearranged. You can request that you be sent one catalog a season. Or, if you just want a catalog to shop from for the holidays, request only one mailing a year at the beginning of holiday season.

New Yorkers - Recycling Magazines is Excellent!

I was in New York today, and I saw in one of the subway stations a big ad for a recycling initiative for magazines and catalogs that was recently launched in New York by Mayor Bloomberg. It is called: ReMix- Recycling Magazines is Excellent.

ReMix is a national public education campaign aimed at increasing residential recycling of magazines and catalogs. The campaign conducted pilot programs in Boston, Milwaukee, and Portland. Now the campaign is bringing the need to recycle magazines and catalogs to the attention of the New Yorkers with promotions on buses, taxis, subc\ways, in movie theatres, on cable television, on billboards and in full-page public service advertisements in consumer magazines. The total budget of the campaign in NY is above $3 million.

According to the Environment News Service (ENN), The ReMix campaign began when a study by Time Inc. and Verso Paper found that while 95 percent of all unsold newsstand magazines are recycled by newsstands and publishers, only about 17 percent of sold magazines are recycled. Just for comparison - Verso CEO, Mike Jackson mentioned on the ENN report that today, 53.4 percent - of all paper consumed in the United States is recovered for reuse.

ENN points out correctly that the there's no problem nowadays to recycle glossy paper used from magazines and catalogs. Currently, all community recycling programs accept magazines and catalogs for recycling.

This is great initiative and I hope it will motivate people to take action and significantly increase the magazines and catalogs they recycle. It's relatively easy and it's doing good twice, by keeping this paper out of landfills and by letting companies resuse it instead of virgin paper to make new paper products.

Here's the 2008 ReMix TV spot (from YouTube):



This is also a good opportunity to remind you on a (relatively) new initiative to eliminate in advance the unwanted catalogs you receive on your mail - Catalog Choice, which I wrote about here in the past (and it's a free service!)

Enjoy recycling!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

No more catalogs for you!

Eric Wilson of the New York Times made me very happy. Wilson wrote today ('Deforest Your Mailbox') on a new online service called Catalog Choice that helps people to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings they receive to their mailbox. And no less important - this service is free of charge!

Any news about an attempt to reduce the amount of catalogs sent to people's mailboxes is great news. Every year 19,000,000,000 (yes, 19 billion!) catalogs are mailed in the US. According to Catalog Choice's website, over eight million tons of trees are consumed each year in the production of these catalogs. Take into consideration the fact that most of the catalogs go directly to the trash bin (or recycling bin in the best case scenario), and you've got pure waste of natural resources.

Catalog Choice is according to the site "a sponsored project of the Ecology Center. It is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and funded by the Overbrook Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, and the Kendeda Fund." Its mission, besides reduction of the number of the mailed catalogs, is to "promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses."

I tried it and it's a very easy and user-friendly process. You register yourself and then can indicate which catalogs you no longer wish to receive. Afterwards, they update the businesses with the list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs.

I like Catalog Choice as it creates a win-win-win situation: Customers benefit from reducing their junk mail at no charge, the companies benefit since they save money by not sending catalogs for customers that don't wish to receive them, and of course the environment benefit due to all the trees that won't cut down.

You are welcome to check it out. According to their website, 29,726 people already registered to the site, having opted out of over 103,490 catalogs. And they're online only since last Wednesday!

And last word - if you want to stop receiving any kind of junk mail, check out other services available like one of my favorite sites, GreenDimes.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!