Postal Service Increases Recycling Efforts
In its continued effort to lessen its impact on the environment, the United States Postal Service has announced its expansion of the Post Office Box Lobby Recycling program.
February 2010 Web
By Amanda Thompson
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The U.S. Postal Service is making a move to increase recycling at its facilities nationwide.
Photo Courtesy Flickr
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The U.S. Postal Service is increasing its efforts to become a greener institution by expanding its Post Office Box Lobby Recycling program to an additional 2,435 post offices nationwide. That’s a 150 percent increase in the number of post offices participating in the program since it began, bringing the total to more than 8,000. The program, which was started in 2005, encourages post office box users to read, respond to and recycle their mail quickly to discourage people from taking mail home and discarding it later.
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This is just one of the steps the Postal Service has taken to becoming greener. To date, the Postal Service has won more than 75 environmental awards for its efforts to be more environmentally friendly.
Here are some other ways the Postal Service has gone green according to its 2008 Sustainability Report:
• Invests $150 million each year toward improving energy efficiency at postal facilities
• Recycles 250,000 tons of materials annually
• Has set a goal to reduce energy use at facilities by 30 percent by 2015
• Has set a goal to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020
To find locations of post offices participating in the “read, respond, recycle” program, visit Earth 911 and type “mail” and your ZIP code into the search boxes.