Catalogs clogging Santa's sack, advocacy group says
Submitted on December 15, 2005 - 1:00am.
B. Blair Dedrick - Fall 2005
He's making a list and checking it twice, but who knew Santa's naughty and nice list would be based on good forest conservation practices?
ForestEthics, a California-based forest conservation advocacy group, helped Santa out this year by compiling a list of catalog companies that rank naughty or nice based on their environmental practices.
"Most of these companies never thought about where their paper comes from," said Dan Howells, paper campaign director for ForestEthics. "We raise issues for any company that has a catalog."
In spite of growing Internet sales, the catalog industry mailed more than 18 billion catalogs in 2004, an increase of 5.3 percent from 2003 and more than 40 percent in the last 10 years, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
ForestEthics, a California-based forest conservation advocacy group, helped Santa out this year by compiling a list of catalog companies that rank naughty or nice based on their environmental practices.
"Most of these companies never thought about where their paper comes from," said Dan Howells, paper campaign director for ForestEthics. "We raise issues for any company that has a catalog."
In spite of growing Internet sales, the catalog industry mailed more than 18 billion catalogs in 2004, an increase of 5.3 percent from 2003 and more than 40 percent in the last 10 years, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
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