Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Read, respond and recycle

Benny here. In my day, recycling wasn't really a big deal. We had a big country and lots of resources. But today, with increased population and environmental concerns, we all have to think about our impact on the world around us.

And that goes for the mail too. It's a touchy subject. Because mail is necessary for commerce, for our jobs and for a big chunk of the economy. It's also printed on paper that when it is read, is traditionally discarded.

We want to make recycling of mail convenient for customers, but we also need to be sensitive to our mailers that pay the postage. We want to encourage people to read their mail.

So we've come up with a good alternative: "‘Read, Respond, and Recycle."

In thousands of postal lobbies, Post Office box customers across the country can recycle their mail with convenient recycling bins that encourage customers to open their mail, respond to it and then responsibly dispose of it.

A complete list of participating post offices can be found at Earth911.com, using the word “mail” in the search engine. The list is sorted by ZIP Code.

More information on green initiatives and consumer products can be found at usps.com/green.

If you already have one of these recycling bins, how are they working? What do your customers think? Comment here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish there was a way to put a recylcing container in EVERY office and have the contents sent to a central facility to be combined and recycled. Many small towns, including the one I work in, don't have local recycling. I usually take cardboard and excess unaddressed boxholders home and put it with my personal recycling, but I don't want to do anything that I shouldn't and get into trouble for it.

Anonymous said...

I am a posmaster in a town of 400 people. I too take recycling home to put with ours since the town I work in does not have this available. The boxholders that people leave in the lobby might as well be recycled instead of going out with the trash as we always did before. This amounts to quite a lot of paper in a couple of weeks.

Anonymous said...

I am also in a small town, and with my POOM's permission, have a container in the lobby for all the customers unwanted mail. I take it to a local home for the disable and the proceeds from the sale of the paper and cardboard go to offset their expenses.