While catching up on local news over a holiday catalog laden mailbox in late September, Sara Cakebread and Sarah Imbert, neighbors on the 1700 block of Pine St. in St. Helena, decided to do a study in holiday season waste. The result of their experiment was a pile of catalogs weighing 320 pounds that were delivered to their two homes and that of neighbors Katie and Kevin Melancon between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30.

Averaging out to over 100 pounds per family, they figured that during this time period the 10 households on their cul de sac would have received approximately 1,000 pounds of catalogs. Based on information from the American Forest & Paper Association web site, this could be the equivalent of up to two tons of hard wood depending on the paper production process. Extending that to the estimated 2,400 households in St. Helena, they figured that 480 tons of wood could be used to convince the community to buy everything from apples to zebra prints for the holidays.

Imbert said, “I would estimate about 15 to 20 of those catalogs were actually used for Christmas shopping by the people on our block.”

 Fortunately, residents of St. Helena and the Napa Valley are staunch recyclers, but everyone on Pine Street wished the catalogs did not have to come in the first place. “Everything in the catalog is also online,” noted Kevin Melancon. “I can see trying to get our attention, but the barrage never ends this time of year. I get at least one catalog a week from some of these places.”

But what is a neighborhood to do when they don’t want to receive a half ton of catalogs over a two month period? Going online to search for sites that mention “removal from catalog mailing lists,” Cakebread found 860,000 listings on Google. When six of the 10 entries on the first page invited users to remove their names from obscure sources such as Café Belmondo, Tlavideo, Digi-Key and Ignatius Press, it was time to dig deeper.

Scanning the sites that offered name removal from more than one catalog at a time, environmentaldefense.org provided the most help. Not only did it give the pros and cons of well known resources such as directmail.com and the mail preference service, it linked directly with a highly touted new player in the field, catalogchoice.com.

A project of three environmental organizations: the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Ecology Center, it is easy to navigate and has no associated costs. Currently the site has access to more than 1,000 catalogs, and according to the directions, all it takes is a click and about 10 weeks of patience to see if it works. Of course there may be glitches to be worked out and you need to keep track of duplicate catalogs received in multiple versions of your name, but that should only take another click or two.

After over an hour navigating the site to click on familiar catalog names, Cakebread sighed in frustration. “This will be worth it in the end, but if I really want to make a change, I will never be able to order from a catalog or the internet again without starting the cycle all over.”

 After all, she found 1,340,000 listings when she searched for “selling catalog mailing lists.”