
Every holiday season my mailbox, not to mention every spare table in my house, is littered with shopping catalogs! A lot of them are from retailers that I have never heard of and am sure will never shop at. Luckily, I’m not a compulsive shopper, so I rarely have stuff in those catalogs arriving at my door (and eventually setting up permanent residence in the back of a closet). With the same uneasy feeling that I have when I clean out the refrigerator and throw out all the expensive food, I throw all those glossy catalogs in the recycling bin. Of course, not before giving them the hard-to-resist peek, which takes more time than I care to admit!
Impact
It is not hard to imagine the destructive impact of producing and discarding millions of these catalogs on the environment. Each year 19 billion sales catalogs are mailed in the USA. 98% of catalogs are unused, eliciting no consumer response.
- 53 million trees are used making these catalogs.
- Producing the paper requires energy equivalent to powering 1.4 million homes a year and creates 24 billion pounds of CO2 global warming pollution (equivalent to the emissions of 2 million cars).
- Waste water discharges from this volume of paper – 53 billion gallons of water, enough to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Of course, one might argue that in the world of multi-channel commerce these catalogs are drivers for increased foot traffic in stores or click through’s for online store-fronts. That rationale though is difficult to quantify – and given the significant cost to the environment, clearly a loss making proposition.
Solution
Luckily, there is a way to reduce this waste. Organizations like catalogchoice.org will allow you to opt-out of unwanted catalogs for free, while keeping or adding the ones you want. Retailers too can benefit by lowering their cost of advertising and better targeting their market. Another way that retailers can help the environment, improve their brand image and cut their carbon footprint is to use recycled paper. The catalog industry alone would save an enormous amount of resources if it were to switch to just 10 percent post-consumer recycled content. Annual savings would include: 851,000 tons of wood, 3.8 trillion BTU of total energy, 510,000 tons of CO2 equivalents, 2.1 billion gallons of wastewater, and 221,000 tons of solid waste. Many retailers are making a switch to recycled paper for their catalogs for these reasons. At Expicient, we are dedicated to helping retailers gain from the benefits of a green supply chain. If you are interested in greening your catalog, or learning more, please contact us at: green@expicient.com As for all you eco-savvy consumers, sign up today at Catalogchoice.org and call/write to your favorite catalog retailer to switch to recycled paper. Happy mail sorting!
The author Ms. Surabhi Konkar is a renewable energy & sustainable supply chain consultant with Expicient Inc.