What is the link between this image above and junk mail?

The answer is catalogues. A relatively small problem in the UK, but an environmental disaster in the States, where the catalogue industry sends out more than 20 billion of them every year. Most of these catalogues are made of virgin fibre and discarded without ever being looked at. In the process, many endangered forests are completely destroyed.

To highlight this issue, American campaign group ForestEthics (also one of the main players in the campaign for a Do Not Mail register in the States) launched a high-profile campaign against lingerie catalogue Victoria's Secret, in October 2004. The campaigners accused the company behind Victoria's Secret, Limited Brands, of using paper from endangered forests in Canada and the Southern US for the million catalogues the companies sends out every day.

Under the campaign slogan Victoria's Dirty Secret, ForestEthics took out full-page adverts in national newspapers depicting among others chainsaw-wielding women in their underwear. Its website (which unfortunately now redirects visitors to the main ForestEthics website) got over a million unique visitors and protests were held outside Victoria's Secret HQ.

The campaign was a success in that Limited Brands adopted a new policy to shift to more environmentally friendly paper in December 2006. However, encouraging as this may be, the amount of (virgin) paper used for junk mail in the US continues to be astronomical by any standard.