USPS Approves Reusable Envelope Line
by Trey Granger
Published on February 22nd, 2008
2 Comments
Tired of all the paper associated with credit card bills and your electricity statement? You may soon have one less piece to worry about.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) has certified ecoEnvelopes’ reusable envelopes for use in U.S. mail. These allow for the initial envelope to also be used as the reply envelope.
While there is no word on which companies will utilize this service, it has the potential to save 80 billion reply envelopes from being processed.
Regardless, you can recycle your commercial mail using Earth 911’s recycling locator. Check out some of the benefits of paper recycling.
noneyabit
posted on February 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Great idea, however a company called Tension Envelopes has been selling this type of item for at least 20 years – and has been approved by the USPS since that time. It is called the “Send-N-Return” – I believe it is a little different than the Eco Envelope, but it serves the same purpose.
The USPS approving these types of items is nothing new. Eco-Envelope is marketing their “approval” press release as a product that has just hit the marketplace and as the only alternative. I am sure Tension did the same type of marketing years ago when they invented the idea and it wasn’t cool to be green.
Either product is a must use if you are into Direct mail fundraising. I do believe the Tension product is a little cheaper though.
Katie
posted on May 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 am
ecoEnvelopes are actually not expensive. They’re either the same price or less than the 2 envelopes companies would normally send out. Plus companies save money on postage because they’re not paying for the weight of a second envelope.
The Tension 2-way envelope is harder to use than ecoEnvelopes–you just rip ecoEnvelopes open, put the return information inside and close them just like a normal envelope. The Send-n-Return envelope requires more thinking from customers, which is why it hasn’t caught on. Usability is a huge factor with reply envelopes because it is so important for companies that their customers are easily able to mail back their checks.
The biggest market for ecoEnvelopes is utility companies, and credit card companies. Xcel Energy in Minnesota, for example, sends out 3 million bills a month, and a lot of their customers aren’t comfortable paying online. There’s also a lot of interest from nonprofits and colleges, who send out plenty of requests for donations.
Hope this helps clarify. Please let me know if you have any more questions.