Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Victoria's Dirty Secret

I have always disliked Victoria's Secret--overpriced lingerie, objectified female form, bombardment of unwanted catalogs and, like nearly every other bra vendor in the USA, they don't even sell my bra size.

(To get a good fit, I have to get my bras imported from Europe. I can mail order all my other clothes and they fit well, so I am a pretty standard size--but I can't buy a US bra off a rack. Given this weird state of affairs, I suspect many, many women in the US are wearing poorly fitting bras, and I have actually surveyed fit instructions online and have found most of them incorrect. But that's another blog topic to be covered in future....)

Today on Bioneers, I heard about the campaign against Victoria's Secret, who had been making its catalogs out of wood pulp taken the Boreal forest.

Victoria's Secret mails ONE MILLION catalogs a day. That's a lot of wood.

After two years of campaigning, Victoria’s Secret reached an agreement with ForestEthics and signed a new paper contract.

Which makes it sound reformed.

But no.

Consider the recent email I received from GreenDimes:

We contact thousands of catalog companies and mailers on our member's behalf every month. Each of these is cooperative and provides an easy way for us to take customers off of mailing list... all but ONE. Victoria's Secret. They require us to call them each and every time we take a customer off of their lists - which can mean hold times of 30 minutes! Odd given that people can request to RECEIVE and REDUCE catalog mailings on-line. I guess this is why they keep sending 350 Million catalogs every year.
GreenDimes stats as of May 2007 were 514,000 pounds of junk mail stopped, over 174,000 trees planted and over 1,313,000 gallons of water saved.

Not bad for a company that started just last autumn.

Good company = GreenDimes
Bad company = Victoria's Secret

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to hear from you again. Your camping trip looks wonderful!

Enjoyed this post about Victoria Secret. How 'odd' that they make it so hard to take your name off the mailing list!

Taoknitter said...

Ooohh, there you go again, poking me in the ass to do something right. Guess I will start the process of stopping junk mail delivery to this house...sigh. Looked it up...they do not make it easy, do they? Poke, poke...

Anonymous said...

Hey Femminista- thanks for mentioning GreenDimes in your post. We really do appreciate your taking the time to tell others about our services/ stats. Make sure you keep checking in with us from time to time so you can see what new things we are up to. Take good care and thanks again for your post!
Best,
Kendra
www.greendimes.com

Anonymous said...

Amen sister! I don't know how I got their mailing list but had to request myself off it three times in writing before the catalogue stopped coming.

I also hate how you can smell the place from the other side of a mall. I can not speak to their quality or selection as I've never had a gas mask handy with which to brave their fumes.