Earth friendly digital mail

earth-class-mail.jpegWe’ve all heard about the promise of going digital, forever after to shun the use of paper. But it seems like a whole industry out there trying to go in the other direction—at least, that’s how I feel every day when I sift through half a dozen advertisements, flyers and other junk mail to find that one piece of paper that might be useful. Well, maybe not—turns out today’s mail was another offer for yet another credit limit increase.

I’m sure I would be horrified to find out how many trees die each year just to keep my mailbox full.

That’s why Earth Class Mail looks so interesting. ECM offers an earth-conscious mail processing service. They act much like a forwarding mailbox, but rather than sending everything by USPS it is scanned and delivered over the web. You can elect to shred, recycle or read your mail online—and for those occasional pieces of paper that you simply must have, they’ll forward it to you. Anywhere in the world. (And, from what I’ve heard, most customers end up forwarding only a couple percent of their mail).

Of course, you still get junk mail. The great thing about ECM is their web interface, which shows you a scan of the envelope. It takes just a moment to decide what to do, and clicking the “recycle” button puts some of that paper back to use. Maybe it’s enough to save a tree or two, though the junk mail industry is still going strong.

Fortunately it looks like we may have better tools with which to stem the tide soon. According to Earth Class Mail’s web site, they’ll soon be offering new features that go even further to fight the junk mail. They’ll even be offering a check processing service, giving us one less reason to send more paper to our mailboxes.

I still find myself wondering, every now and then, how long it will be before everything is digital. Once we take care of processing those checks digitally, about the only thing I’ll want in my mailbox are a few magazines, or those Christmas presents for the kids.