Philobiblon

I read today about a neat protest against Victoria’s Secret, which mails 395 million catalogs annually [in the US], most printed on virgin paper. The protesters want it to use recycled paper – a start, but not, I’d suggest enough. Why, in the multimedia age, do we still need to not only print on paper, but then ship that vast weight around countries (and even across the world) – consuming lots of fossil fuel in the process?

I recently rang up Land’s End, a particularly egregarious offender in sending vast numbers of catalogues, sometimes it seems at weekly intervals, and asked them to stop. “Don’t you like us any more?” was the line of questioning. “No,” I said, “if I decided I need any more white T-shirts or similar, I will look on the website.”

Surely it is time for companies to at least provide the option of not getting catalogues? By all means send me a regular email with special offers etc, or reminding me to visit your website – I think the environment can bear the electrons – but don’t use 20th-century methods of promotion; you’ll only annoy me.