Your Holiday Mailbox-Detox Diet

Signs of the approaching holidays: twinkling lights, Santas on street corners, carols on the airwaves, and...a mailbox overflowing with unsolicited catalogs. Each year more than 18 billion catalogs are sent to potential shoppers in the United States, many of them printed expressly for the winter gift-giving season. Cast-off catalogs often end up in overburdened landfills, and their production and distribution result in deforestation, water waste, and carbon dioxide emissions. So NRDC, in collaboration with the Ecology Center and the National Wildlife Federation, created Catalog Choice, which allows consumers to take their names off mailing lists. The service costs nothing, and it lets you free your mailbox of the catalogs you don't want while continuing to receive the ones you like. Control over your mailbox: our gift to you this holiday season.