USPS Expands Lobby Recycling Program
The U.S. Postal Service has expanded its “Read, Respond, Recycle” program with the addition of 1,844 new lobby recycling locations this month. The program encourages proper mail recycling by offering convenient bins in more than 5,900 post office locations.
Mail is classified as “mixed paper,” a term used to describe recovered and recyclable paper that hasn’t yet been sorted into categories. Mixed paper can include magazines and catalogs, old newspapers, brochures, envelopes and other forms of recyclable paper materials.
With 203 billion pieces of mail processed by the Postal Service in 2008, your mail volume can get overwhelming. Photo: oregonstate.edu.
We all know the drill. You visit the post office box only to find junk mail has infiltrated your mailbox. Catalogs, coupons and credit card offers, oh my. That mail is unlikely to make it home, tossed out on the way out the post office doors. With the addition of 1,844 lobby paper recycling bins, USPS is making it easier for customers to recycle unwanted and read mail on the way out those lobby doors.
USPS recycles nearly 1 million tons of wastepaper, cardboard, plastics, cans and other materials each year. In 2008, it generated more than $12 million in revenue from the sale of recyclables as raw materials.
USPS is the only shipping company in the country to earn Cradle to Cradle certification for all Priority Mail and Express Mail packages and envelopes based on the environmental attributes of the packaging materials.
The Postal Service also reminds customers that “you have a say in what goes in your mailbox.” To reduce unsolicited mail in your mailbox, try working with a junk mail reduction program to decrease what is sent your way. The Postal Service also suggests contacting the businesses that send the unwanted catalogs and offers your way and asking to be removed from their lists.
Earth911 has added the 1,844 lobby recycling centers to the extensive mail recycling database, making it easy to find a location near you.
As of June 17th 2011 we have upgraded our comment system to use Facebook comments. The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.
Trey Granger
posted on March 26th, 2009 at 10:03 am
If you go out of town for a week and have your mail held, the Post Office will likely give you a large bin full of mail when you go pick it up. This bin would serve as a great future storage container for mail you want to recycle, or any other products that you want to collect at home and recycle.
Killing the Junk Mail Habit « Askthefm’s Weblog
posted on March 26th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
[...] Well we have some good news for those of you with post office boxes, the Us Postal Service is expanding their lobby recycling program so you can responsibly dispose of that direct, or “junk” mail easily and quickly. The story can be found at Earth911 (http://earth911.com/blog/2009/03/26/usps-expands-lobby-recycling-program/). [...]
» USPS Expands Lobby Recycling Program
posted on March 26th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
[...] Excerpt from: USPS Expands Lobby Recycling Program [...]
Recycling Process
posted on March 28th, 2009 at 2:45 am
nice article…. keep it up.
Kim
posted on July 9th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Great service. Are we confident the mail is secure and shredded so no one is picking through it before recycle? I spend lots of hours tearing off names and addresses from our mail per instruction of the State Attorney’s Office to avoid identity theft.