AOL discs returned to sender

The two Californian men who kicked off the campaign have now gathered more than 80,000 of the promotional discs.

The campaign is intended to tell the company about the damage the discs do to the environment when discarded, and shame it into curbing its zealous promotional efforts.

In addition sister campaigns to collect CDs are springing up around the world.

Global alliance

Net service America Online now has more than 35 million subscribers. It has built up this huge number by sending out CDs in the post, by putting them in magazines and newspapers and by handing them out on the street.

Californians Jim McKenna and John Lieberman want AOL to stop sending out the discs in huge numbers because the vast majority go unused and end up thrown away and buried in landfill sites.

The pair have set up a website to co-ordinate their campaign to collect one million unwanted CDs that they will then dump on the doorstep of the AOL head office in Virginia.

Since the campaign began, the pair have managed to collect over 80,000 unwanted promotional AOL CDs, many of which have been posted to them by fellow campaigners.

One campaigner alone has sent in more than 15,000 of the discs.

The protest has also spawned sister organisations in France, Germany, Australia and the UK.

Mr Lieberman and Mr McKenna said they had nothing against AOL as a company but simply wanted to show it how wasteful its efforts to promote its services were becoming.

Despite the campaign AOL remains unmoved by it so far. A spokesman for the company said the widespread distribution of its CDs was the best way to promote its service.