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Feb 13, 2009 4:54 pm US/Eastern

Green Scene: Reduce & Recycle Your Mail

Reporting
Liz Keptner

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―

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Do you ever wish you could reduce the amount of mail you get? CBS 3's Liz Keptner shows us a way to recycle your mail before it's ever delivered to your home.

Every day, the Postal Service delivers boat loads of mail -- all of it paper. Only a fraction of it ends up recycled.

'The average consumer who receives mail will only recycle about twenty percent of it," said Justin Duke of Earth Class Mail, a kind of electronic alternative to snail mail.

Customers of Earth Class Mail have their letters, bills and packages sent directly to the company, which scans the mail and uploads it online.

'Our customers recycle 90 percent of their mail," said Duke. "This is less mail in the landfills throughout America."

Greg Hoy uses Earth Class Mail for his Center City Philadelphia business.

"I would say probably 75 percent of the mail we get is useless mail," said Hoy. "It's catalogs, it's offer requests from office supply stores."

Instead, Hoy gets his snail mail through email -- essentially just getting a picture of it.

Hoy showed us how it works. "We can see it's a lovely catalog from Crate and Barrel, which we're not going to have anything to do with, so we have some options here," said Hoy. "We can open it and scan it, we can recycle it, we can shred it if it's sensitive."

If there's an envelope Hoy wants, he can have everything inside scanned and read it right on his computer. If Hoy doesn't want it? He clicks "recycle."

"It certainly ensures that the mail that you get that you don't necessarily want gets recycled responsibly," said Hoy.

The company says it checks its employees' backgrounds and has rigorous security standards. Prices start at $9.99 a month. Of course, recycling your own mail yourself is free.

RELATED LINKS:

Earth Class Mail