Do Not Mail campaign success stories

Protecting the environment by taking on some of the world’s largest companies requires tenacity and rapid strategic evolution. In a constantly changing landscape, ForestEthics continually pioneers innovative ways to achieve enduring successes with cutting edge environmentalism.

Transforming the paper industry

ForestEthics has played a key role in transforming the paper industry, along the way improving the environmental impacts of Fortune 500 companies including Staples, Williams-Sonoma, and many others. The Victoria’s Dirty Secret campaign, marked by irreverent ads and web-based advocacy, achieved victory in December 2006 with Victoria’s Secret’s announcement of a landmark new environmental policy.

Our annual Green Grades report card has set the standard for sustainable practices in the office supply sector. And we have shifted many major catalog retailers and direct mailers to greener paper standards with our Naughty/Nice List, a holiday-themed scorecard on the catalog and direct mail industry.

Our unique and powerful ability to turn corporate adversaries into allies has led to landmark environmental victories and enduring agreements in the areas that we work to protect, including the Great Bear Rainforest, the Inland Temperate Rainforest, and the Boreal Forest.
Tell some of the worst junk mailers that you're sick of receiving junk mail >>

Building The Movement to stop junk mail

Junk mail has been a daily nuisance for so long that many Americans have given up hope of standing up to the powerful junk mail lobby and changing the status quo. But thanks to our work, the worst junk mail offenders are feeling the pressure: two major US cities, San Francisco and Seattle, have passed resolutions calling for statewide Do Not Mail registries and more than 100,000 people have joined our campaign to stop junk mail.
Check out our campaign history >>

Our efforts have not gone unnoticed by the mainstream press: Time Magazine, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and Fast Company have all followed the story, among others.

Our 2008 report on the climate impacts of junk mail added a powerful urgency to an issue that already drove citizens batty. If we must change our consumption habits to address climate change, what better place to start than with something most of us didn’t want anyway?

In late 2009, we flexed our activist muscles, helping organize citizens all over the country return their junk mail to the companies sending it. In other words, we gave them a taste of their own medicine. These “Return to Offender” actions caused two leading junk mailers – American Express and Capital One – finally respond to the pressure that our activists are helping to build. While both of these junk mailers need to improve their practices drastically, our work led the companies to draft paper policies calling for recycled content, FSC-certified paper, and overall reduction for the first time ever.

These junk mailers know that they must reform their practices, and they are just beginning to talk to us about their problem. Now, we are committed to keeping their feet to the fire until they do the right thing.
Tell some of the worst junk mailers to stop their environmentally destructive and personally intrusive practices now >>