The Postal Service’s Green Initiatives

Filed under Delivery, Environmental Issues, Public Policy, Transportation  

We Recycle for You: Fuel Use, Recycling, Building Standards, Facility Energy Use, Purchasing, Packaging, Picture of globe inside recycling symbol

Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 this year, making now an appropriate time for a blog on the Postal Service’s green initiatives. The Postal Service’s environmental efforts fall into many areas including:

  • Packaging — The Postal Service is the nation’s only shipping company to achieve Cradle to Cradle certification for human and environmental health for its premium products’ packaging. The certification means that more than 15,000 metric tons of carbon equivalent emissions are avoided annually.
  • Fuel use — The Postal Service has increased alternative fuel use by 41 percent since 2006, in part by using hybrid and ethanol vehicles and T-3 Motion electric vehicles. In some places, the Postal Service uses foot and even bicycle routes. The Postal Service plans to continue implementing green strategies to further reduce petroleum use by 20 percent over the next 5 years.
  • Facility energy use — The Postal Service has conducted energy audits and reduced energy use at its facilities. By law, it is required to achieve a 30 percent reduction in facility energy use from 2003 levels by 2015.
  • Recycling — The Postal Service annually recycles more than 1 million tons of paper, plastic, and other materials. It also offers recycling opportunities to customers including recycling bins for P.O. Box customers at post offices and a mail-in recycling program for e-waste (small electronics and printer cartridges).
  • Purchasing — The Postal Service has a Green Purchasing Team to bring environmental practices into its supply purchasing and contracting processes.
  • Building standards — The Postal Service’s new “green” lobby design incorporates low impact environmental materials such as linoleum and bamboo.

The Postal Service has won numerous awards for their green initiatives. In fact, just this month, the Postal Service accepted the California Climate Action Registry’s (CCAR) Climate Action Champion award in recognition for its leadership role in engaging and shaping public response to climate change and for substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet there may be opportunities for the Postal Service to promote sustainability beyond these successes. In a commentary in the New York Times, Postal Regulatory Commissioner Ruth Goldway proposed the government provide money to convert the Postal Service’s fleet to electric vehicles. Not only would electric vehicles save gasoline, but they would also be more suited to the start-and-stop driving practiced by the Postal Service. In addition, the Postal Service could help jump start green vehicle technologies. To support this electronic fleet, post offices could be retrofitted with solar panels to generate electric power. Perhaps customers could even recharge their cars when they stopped to buy stamps.

What do you think of converting the Postal Service’s fleet to electric vehicles? Would it be feasible to implement? Do you have other suggestions for green initiatives the Postal Service could pursue?

Which area should be the top focus of the Postal Service’s environmental efforts?

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This blog topic is hosted by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center (RARC).

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Permalink | Comments (18) | Apr 20, 2009

 

 

18 Responses to “The Postal Service’s Green Initiatives”

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  1. 18
    RARC host Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am

    Thank you for your comment, bonj. You have given this a lot of thought. You bring up a good point that data centers require energy but so does physicial delivery. However, I wonder if we sometimes give electronic communication a free pass on its environmental costs. These sort of judgments should be based on a careful, unbiased look at the entire lifecycle.

  2. 17
    Bonj Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    The Postal Service may be taking steps to be greener, but are there any initiatives to go beyond mail bound to paper products? In other words, is the Postal Service looking at anything beyond moving the tangible?

    I understand RealityChecks comments as there is a cost to running a Data Center, but electronic data would not inherently require the distribution center layout that the physical mail does, thus allowing for a more consolidated physical infrastructure.

    I know there are Federal, State, County, and Local Governments looking for ways to continue to provide services with smaller budgets. Mail being a healthy expense for notices, etc. Delivery of some notices are courtesy and may be done away with as a cost savings measure, but some are mandated and must be delivered to individuals. In some cases delivery of electronic notices would meet requirements (for some there are likely statutory reasons that this cannot be done, and some are are likely trying to address via some type of legislative change). As these agencies lessen what they send and/or move as much as they can to electronic means, it will only lessen the volume the USPS has to work with, hence less revenues as well.

    Is the USPS talking to government agencies at various levels to see what it might be able to provide? Is the USPS aware of such initiatives and that it could affect it’s future?

    As a trusted physical handler of mail in the industry there may be oppurtunities that the USPS could pusue in the electronic arena.

    If a company like Zumbox gets enough big businesses to utilize there service and if they can overcome the potential security and legal concerns of goverment agencies, they could possibly capture a good amount of mail market. One would think the USPS might be able to offer such a service to Government entities that might offer security in line with government’s needs and allow these government agencies to have a standard electronic method of disseminating such information to constituents at a much lower rate than the traditional method. Having a standard solution/method geared towards government’s needs might lessen the plethora of systems, home grown and off the shelf, that government agencies will likely end up with. No doubt that these systems will cost money, for some it will be worth it, if not in the short term, then in the long run. It may also allow for the restoration of some notices that have been discontinued, as well as open up the potential for additional service reminders, etc.

    Of course, having a solution for businesses could help the revenue stream as well.

    An individual to individual solution might be of interest to some, but it would likely be a much smaller market as the mandates on these intereactions are not up to the scrutiny that one sees between the government or a business sending your personal tax information, etc.

  3. 16
    RARC host Says:
    April 29th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    That’s an interesting idea. I know in places like Las Vegas the city encourages people to use native plants, which are more suitable to the local climate and require less watering. Perhaps there are ways to landscape that require less upkeep.

  4. 15
    Dave Lodermeier Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am

    Turn off the lawn sprinkler systems. It doesn’t make sense to try and eliminate jobs and make the grass grow so you can mow it. Let nature do the work. I’m sure it will save the USPS millions in energy and water consumption.

  5. 14
    RARC host Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    That is true, RealityChecker. When people criticize the Postal Service or printed communications for not being green enough, they often ignore the environmental deficiencies of electronic alternatives. After all, paper doesn’t drain power when it is idling on a desk.

  6. 13
    RARC host Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    These sound as though they are great suggestions. I wish I knew more about OIG retail forms. I wonder if there is a way for offices to just print out rarely used forms.

  7. 12
    Skippy Says:
    April 24th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

    What about the emoves 1412? What if there was a way to shrink down the 1412 to list just the AIC’s that were used for the day. This way, other information such as money order numbers and miscellaneous AICs won’t have to be printed on a seperate sheet. You could probably include the drawer balances for each clerk on here too so you won’t need a seperate tally sheet.

    The POS 1412 could also use some condensing. Although it has been awhile since I printed the end of the day stuff on POS, I can remember that there was a lot of information on there that didn’t have to be printed every day.

    The biggest paper waster of all (outside all of the senseless checklists of course)is the minimum quantity numbers on the quick picks. I recently ordered a pack of 3575z’s. The mimimum quantity is 250. Do you know how long it will take for me to go through 250 of these forms in a level 11 office? The form will probably be obsolete by that time. I use no more than a half dozen a year.

    Give me some time, I bet I can come up with more.

  8. 11
    RARC host Says:
    April 23rd, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Great suggestions. Does anyone else have ideas for forms the Postal Service could reduce?

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