 In just one year, the Catalog Choice Program has stopped over 22 tons of unwanted advertising mail from reaching the Portland region's mailboxes. Tom talked with EcoMain board member Susan McGinty about how the program benefits the environment and how you can sign up. Thanks for joining us to talk about the first anniversary of Catalog Choice, EcoMain's program that just started a year ago. Before we get into exactly what that is for some people who may not know what EcoMain is, could you just talk about that briefly? EcoMain is a regional organization that manages the waste and recyclables, all aspects of the waste stream for many of the communities in Cumberland County and some of the communities in York County. And actually in recent years, we've kind of spread out and we have some associate members that are farther flung. And one of the things that you do with trash is to burn it and make energy out of it, but before that you encourage people to recycle. We do. EcoMain is the successor of regional waste systems, which began in, I think, 1988. And somewhere in the early 90s, we began recycling. And we've always made that a priority, even though it might seem that it's counterintuitive to an organization that's burning waste for energy. Well, yeah, but it reduces it. And of course, this is sort of the mantra for recycling is reduce, reuse, recycle. It describes a hierarchy of what people should do first. And the first thing is reduce, which is what Catalog Choice is all about. So now how does it work? How do people get involved? What do they do? If you go to our website, you can find a link to Catalog Choice and go on the website. It's secure. Your information is secure. We do track information by zip code, and that allows us at EcoMain to know how successful we've been. Basically, the program is to choose what catalogs you want to receive and don't want to receive? Yes. I have to admit that I kind of like catalogs. They're shiny. They have great pictures. They let me know what I might want to buy and what I never even knew I wanted to buy. But there are quite a few of them. And I have to admit, I should be ashamed to admit, but candor in this season is probably a refreshing thing. And I had not been a participant in Catalog Choice until Shelly came with the annual figures, which was kind of a great reminder that this is an opportunity. So I brought along a little pile here, and you might think this is a catalog, but that is just the back page of the catalogs that I had. Oh, and a catalog. Wow. That is a lot of catalogs. And that's not any duplicates. Right. And how much time does it take to go through that? To go through them? If you wanted to. That's right. So you do have to take a few minutes to go on the website. But it's really quite easy. I spent a little time kind of looking around it when I first went on. But really, you just go in, you put down your name, your address. You do have to join, which is basically just giving them your email and your zip code. And quickly, how successful was it in the last year? What has been accomplished? Well, we have, where are the totals? We have prevented local waste to the tune of 22.2 tons. I don't have all these on the top of my head, but we've saved over 300,000 gallons of water in the past year. And we've prevented 62.7 tons of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere. And actually, that's from not a huge number of participants. So we would really like to see that number. And how many participants were in the first year? I believe it was 600 households. Wow, and your area covers way. It's a small fraction. Wow, so a lot of people should be able to participate in the program. And you can participate by just eliminating the catalogs that you might not be in the least bit interested in. And the reason I have all these back pages is because you do kind of need the back page, but you don't have to run to your computer the minute that catalog comes in the door. If you just rip off the back page and put it near your computer, you can recycle the rest of the catalog right then. And when you have a few minutes, you can sit down. And they do have a list of catalogs, but you can just type in the name of the catalog that you have. And do we get more information? People just go to the website? Yes, go to the eco-main.org website. And you'll find a link to catalog choice. Great, thank you very much.