What are the environmental costs of “snail mail?” That’s easy, right: paper-based mail has a massive footprint when one takes into account the harvesting of trees, the production of paper, and the disposal of much of what we receive in our mail boxes.
What’s the answer? Electronic mail… right?
Well… maybe. If you have someone’s email address, or can easily find it, email as currently configured does provide a viable alternative. But, ever tried to email everyone on your block? If you’re a marketer, ever tried to simply email everyone on your snail mail list? For the most part, unless you’ve taken steps to gather those email addresses, you can’t complete these tasks: email addresses have no immediate connection to a physical address.
Enter Zumbox, a start-up based in the Los Angeles area. Their solution to the paper-email dilemma: create an electronic mailbox for every physical mailing address in the United States.
By Jessica Gottlieb •
February 13, 2009
I. Hate. Paper. Mail.
I don’t dislike it, I detest it. I don’t need yet another bill from AT&T to sit on my desk. I pay it all online anyhow. I’ve signed up for internet only billing with a few companies, but for some I’m so panicked about not receiving the email (think mortgage) that I really want it sent to my physical address.
I’ve eliminated some of the obvious junk with 41Pounds, but there’s got to be a way for me to still get traditional mail without the 42 dollar footprint (no that’s not a typo), well, someone had the idea to stop fighting the postal system and migrate to a virtual mailbox.
Zumbox.
By Kristen Chase •
December 16, 2008
Since we live far away from most of our close friends and family, we have to ship most of our gifts each year, which can end up being a pretty eco-unfriendly task considering the amount of wasteful shipping products out there. While we want our gifts to arrive completely unharmed, I want to make sure I’m not filling up the landfills with the three top offenders of shipping waste: styrofoam peanuts, brand new boxes, and plastic bubble wrap.
Thanks to my other gigs, I’ve got plenty of used packing materials laying around, all of which I reuse, or give to my kids for their art projects. In fact, our Christmas wrap is made entirely from brown packing paper stamped with carved potato stamps.
However, while you may not have those types of packing materials right in your closet, you probably have a few other things in there that will work well, and that won’t create more waste than necessary this holiday season.
By Paul Smith •
February 21, 2008
Depending on your business, mailing can be a major expense and large use of resources. But it doesn’t have to be that way. EcoEnvelopes is a new company that has created reusable envelopes. As in they can be two-way, between you 
and your customer, eliminating the need for reply envelopes. It’s been said that a mailer, in order to be effective, needs 6 distinct pieces to it, to engage the potential customer in a number of ways. With such a visually striking mailer as the ones offered by ecoEnvelope, it could take much less then that.
These envelopes can serve the dual purpose of reducing resource use in terms of paper, handling, and tracking, and at the same time shining a green light on your company. With more then 80 billion reply envelopes mailed each year in the US, this is not an insignificant impact. According to ecoEnvelopes, every one million ecoEnvelopes used saves an estimated 250 million BTUs of energy and 37,000 pounds of greenhouse gases.
By mcmilker •
January 16, 2008
Ron Wiener is acutely aware of the challenges of receiving and responding to mail while on the go. A serial entrepreneur, Weiner often finds himself out of the office managing his growing business, Earth Class Mail.
Billed as, “The Ultimate P.O. Box”, Earth Class Mail delivers your mail online 24/7 wherever you are. Tired of opening up junk mail? Earth Class Mail will receive your mail for you, scan the envelopes and send them to you online. You decide which get forwarded, which gets shredded and which get recycled. Perfect for nomadic executives and small business owners, Earth Class Mail is also a greener way to manage mail.
By Max Lindberg •
December 23, 2007
What do they do with chocolate products they can’t sell? Off to the landfill to decompose and create methane. Wish they could just send it to me. Two young Britons, Andy Pag and John Grimshaw, have traveled more than 4,000 miles across the Sahara using such chocolate as fuel.
The two decided to prove the viability of different kinds of feedstock to produce biofuels, especially biodiesel and ethanol. They’ve done that, traveling from Poole, England to Timbuktu, Mali, 4,473 miles, using 396 gallons of fuel made from three tons of discarded chocolate.
The truck was salvaged from a scrap yard, repaired and fitted for the long trip. It will remain in Timbuktu, a donation to a local charity. The crew will also set up a small processing unit to convert waste oil products into fuel.
By Amy Stodghill •
April 26, 2007
The French postal service (La Poste) has ordered up 10,000 electric delivery vehicles.
La Poste will phase in the electric vehicles over a five year period and will get their first shipment of 500 in 2008. They've been testing eight electric models in Paris and in Bordeaux since 2005 (which must have gone really well considering the order). Manufacturers expected to bid on the request include French transport groups
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By Rebecca Carter •
January 15, 2007
No longer are the days when we go to our mailbox and find it full. If you find yourself with a full mailbox, it is unlikely that your friends and family have suddenly switched back to snail mail. The more likely culprit is junk mail, and it comes in all shapes and sizes.
Junk mail comes from many different sources, and while it should be easier to remove yourself from the mailing lists, it is
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