A quick and easy way to reduce the amount of waste in Greenland is to stop distributing catalogs and newspapers to every single household every single week.

Every week the chain grocery stores Brugseni, Pisiffik, and Super1 deliver physical catalogs displaying new products, and products on sale. Every other week Pisiffik also deliver a catalog from their other stores Elgiganten, Nota Bene, Torrak Fashion. In Nuuk the local newspaper “Nuuk Ugeavis” also gets delivered every Wednesday.

As seen in the above picture Pisiffik chooses to cover their catalogs in unnecessary plastic which serves no purpose.

The weekly local Nuuk Ugeavis is available to read for free online. So are the catalogs from Brugseni, Pisiffik/Elgiganten/Spar/Torrak Fashion/Pisattat/Jysk, Super1, and Stark.

So if every catalog and newspaper is available online for free. Why is it necessary to print physical copies and distribute them to every household? The answer is of course - it’s not.

In Denmark it’s possible for households to opt-out of receiving free newspapers and catalogs by signing up for the “No thanks”-sticker. Which is a sticker you put on your mailbox, and you will no longer receive the waste that is store catalogs.

Such a way for people and households to opt-out of receiving local newspapers and catalogs are, however, not available for people in Greenland.

GreenGreenland proposes an opt-in procedure. The default should be that no household receives store catalogs or newspapers unless the household has specifically signed up for it.

This will heavily reduce the amount of waste produced, which saves everyone a lot of time and money. And it helps the environment.