USPS Goes Cradle to Cradle
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA 
on 10.23.07
We’ve already seen the United States Postal Service making aggressive attempts to reduce its energy bills, and MSNBC has recently brought us news about Cradle to Cradle going mainstream. However, it wasn’t until we got chatting to the Cradle to Cradle folks from MBDC at the recent Wal-Mart Sustainability Summit that we discovered that they had been working with the USPS on greening their supply chain. As a result of the partnership, all Express Mail and Priority Mail packages and envelopes supplied by the service now meet Cradle to Cradle Silver certification.
More than 60 packaging items were examined, breaking those items down to 250 component materials and then further analyzing 1,400 individual ingredients. These were then assessed according to various criteria ranging for human and environmental health, including toxicity, renewable energy, water stewardship, recyclability and other manufacturing attributes. The postal service claims this initiative alone will save the equivalent 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. Bill McDonough, co-founder of MBDC, had this to say:
“We are very excited by the launch of Cradle to Cradle certified Express Mail and Priority Mail packaging. I would like to recognize the Postal Service’s leadership in gaining Cradle to Cradle Certification, being on a positive trajectory to becoming more sustainable, and helping their customers make smarter choices. This is the first major national and international product to gain MBDC’s certification that is used by consumers every day,”
This kind of mainstreaming of rigorous environmental criteria, above and beyond current legislation, is a huge step towards a more sustainable society. Given the fact that USPS provides its customers with more than 500 million Express Mail and Priority Mail envelopes and packages a year, there will be an awful lot of people whose lives will be that little bit greener thanks to this initiative. ::USPS::via MBDC::via Wal-Mart Live Better Sustainability Summit::
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How about making them easy to reuse? It would be nice if we could reuse these boxes the way that companies reuse interoffice mail envelopes.
craddle to cradle? What do I do with all the Tyvek (non-rip) envelopes sitting around my office that, as the previous poster points out, aren't exactly reuseable?
Looks like I'll be using USPS more than FedEx now, but I still have a few suggestions to make USPS more green:
*Plastic, recyclable, reusable packaging
*Biodegradable packaging
*Biofuel (NOT CORN ETHANOL!), plugin hybrid, hybrid, or full electric vehicles
These are just things that I know for a fact they aren't doing on a large scale, and that bother me. I"m not sure if they're doing other things, like using water-based glues and recycled packaging.
I think they are talking about new stuff, not what's in your office:)
The energy use in all their vehicles (including planes) has got to be a bigger impact than their packaging...
I know that they have done at least one thing regarding their vehicles - thousands of post office cars now have a GPS that avoids left turns, because you are often left sitting for a while at left turns. However, they do not make you go so far out of your way that you waste gas. It is estimated that this will save about 42,000 gallons of gas a year (if I remember correctly).
I know that they have done at least one thing regarding their vehicles - thousands of post office cars now have a GPS that avoids left turns, because you are often left sitting for a while at left turns. However, they do not make you go so far out of your way that you waste gas. It is estimated that this will save about 42,000 gallons of gas a year (if I remember correctly).
Glad to see USPS greening its packaging, and jazzed about high-profile acceptance of Cradle-to-Cradle thinking. (:-) Higher reusability would be good, too.
BTW, DuPont has a Tyvek recycling page that tells users how to recycle Tyvek envelopes (#2 HDPE) in small, medium and large quantities.
We ran a detailed piece on the USPS Cradle to Cradle process today:
http://www.sustainableisgood.com/blog/2007/12/usps-cradle-to.html
HA! this is a joke. Isn't the first step in the three R's REDUCE? you can not reuse priority mail boxes or supplies unless you are shipping it priority mail, even if you cover up the label! They should charge a small fee for their boxes if they want people to stop taking advantage of their free supplies and allow customers to reuse them for any shipping purpose they want!
Everybody says "oh I recycle" Who cares? it would help if you reduce your consumption FIRST!