Earth Class Mail: An Eco Way to Manage Mail
Ron Wiener is acutely aware of the challenges of receiving and responding to mail while on the go. A serial entrepreneur, Weiner often finds himself out of the office managing his growing business, Earth Class Mail.
Billed as, “The Ultimate P.O. Box”, Earth Class Mail delivers your mail online 24/7 wherever you are. Tired of opening up junk mail? Earth Class Mail will receive your mail for you, scan the envelopes and send them to you online. You decide which get forwarded, which gets shredded and which get recycled. Perfect for nomadic executives and small business owners, Earth Class Mail is also a greener way to manage mail.
Post offices are generally among the largest consumers of energy in their respective countries.
Various studies report that the average person recycles perhaps 20% of her mail, while Earth Class Mail customers recycle more than 90% of their mail, with a click of a mouse.
For every ton of paper we recycle, we reduce the marginal air pollution generated by new paper production by 74%, and water pollution by 35%.
Simply sign up online to have your mail forwarded to one of Earth Class Mail’s P.O. Boxes in 20 major US cities. Each piece of unopened mail is bar-coded scanned and uploaded to your secure online mailbox. With a click of a mouse, you decide whether to recycle unwanted mail; have the contents scanned for you to read online or have the mail forwarded to you or another individual.
Earth Class Mail uses disabled veterans with Department of Defense clearance to perform the opening and scanning functions and videotapes the service. You can even watch them open your mail!.
Currently active in over 120 countries, the three-year-old company has just raised their second round of funding and plans to open a storefront location in mid town Manhattan to be followed by locations in 18 other U.S. cities.
How much does this service cost? It’s pretty cool.
Forgive me if I’m be stupid but how does this help the environment? Surely it’s just a timesaver, though perhaps a small proportion more will be recycled. Seems to me you would be better off reducing the amount of mail printed and posted in the first place by using one of the many “stop junkmail” services out there.
Joel,
Absolutely! The best way to reduce junk mail is to join the stopjunkmail organizations. But also to recycle things like envelopes, letters, etc. This makes it easier.
[...] Wiener, CEO of EarthClass mail which I wrote about here is the green entrepreneur featured. And while some may, and one commenter did, say that this [...]
sounds ridiculous! saving energy????? you are resorting mail that has already been sorted by the post office - you are doubling the energy used for each customer you have!!!
I don’t buy it - I can already pay all my bills online - I don’t even need to open envelopes - so all the paper gets recycled and shredded.
sorry - I am not a believer!
Receiving your mail at earth class is good for the environment. The idea is that normally mail will be thrown into the bin, but with services like Earth Class and http://www.privatebox.co.nz mail is recycled in bulk.