5 green ideas you can steal from the Post Office
September 29, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Solutions
Your company probably isn’t as big as the U.S. Postal Service, an organization that generated nearly 500,000 tons of waste in 2008. But that doesn’t mean you can’t follow its green, cost-cutting example.
The Post Office, in carrying out green business mandates set by the government, has already seen some very measurable results.
Here’s some of what the USPS did, which can be emulated by a business of any size:
- They changed network printer default settings to a double-sided printing, saving $49,000 a month in supply costs.
- They changed default settings on color printers to black and white, so that users had to deliberately choose to print in color. That meant 700,000 fewer color pages per month and savings of $37,000 per month.
- Webinars and online communications are used as a substitute for some live training and face-to-face meetings to cut down on travel costs.
- Technology is used to reduce the amount of time employees’ computers stayed turned on.
- A new stress on recycling has led to around a million tons of wastepaper, cardboard, plastics, and cans over the course of a year. They generated about $7.5 million in revenue from that recycling.
Other green moves the organization has made:
- The USPS is a major supplier of half a billion envelopes and other mailing containers. These are now 100% recycled matter and free to users.
- The service is encouraging users to buy stamps and send mail from offices (and home), saving extra trips.
- It’s working with both tech companies like HP and Dell to expedite returns of toner cartridges and electronic devices including PCs and printers.
The boring old post office is taking a lead in both going green and generating savings and new revenue. Maybe your company can follow suit.
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Tags: cost savings, energy, green, Post Office, printing
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September 30th, 2009 at 9:41 am
These are great steps in the right direction. It would be fantastic to see which of the three major delivery companies (USPS, UPS, FedEx) are the first to switch to hybrid vehicles. Or at least commit to using biofuels.
October 9th, 2009 at 10:10 am
This article only scratches the surface of what the Postal Service is doing. They’ve been going green way before it was the popular thing to do.
From usps.com..
We use refined bio-based oil, alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas, hydrogen, or ethanol gas, and re-tread tires on our fleet of Postal vehicles
The Postal Service has the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the nation and over 43,000 of them are alternative-fuel capable. Our E-85 alternative-fuel project put 584 ethanol-powered vehicles on the road in Minnesota alone. Since we primarily refuel at commercial retail fueling locations, our fleet generates demand for alternative fuels nationwide.
General Motors and the Postal Service worked together to test the GM HydroGen3 fuel cell minivan for deliveries in the Washington, D.C. metro area and Irvine, CA—the first commercial use of a fuel cell vehicle in the nation. Our other vehicle technology efforts include advanced diesel vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and electric CitiVans, which are recognized by the EPA as zero emission vehicles.
October 9th, 2009 at 10:15 am
The USPS has more hybrid/alternative fuel vehicles on the road than any other carrier. Couple that with the Green initiatives the Postal Service has been implementing since 1994 or so (way before it was fashionable) and the Postal Service is hands down the greenest way to ship.
Oh, don’t forget, they deliver to every address, every delivery day so sending anyone else to that address is redundant and burns excess fuel!
October 9th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Mellissa says “These are great steps in the right direction. It would be fantastic to see which of the three major delivery companies (USPS, UPS, FedEx) are the first to switch to hybrid vehicles. Or at least commit to using biofuels.” I hope someone has told her just how much of the USPS fleet is already hybrid, biofuel, hydgren, electric, and such. I think its almost half and an ever growing % of the USPS fleet. I do not have the number in front of me but I do not think the USPS has any new vehicles that are not in some way greener than the old ones.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Thanks for the kudos. We at the Post Office are switching over to hybrid vehicles along with some electric 2-ton trucks and some electric three wheel scooters that will pull a wagon of a sort to haul the mail for the carrier. All though it takes us alot longer to get these things implemented in a speedy process, considering we have 200,000 vehicles on the road in a given day.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I have never researched the topic deeply.
I simply smell the gas fumes from the UPS trucks every day around 9:00 AM when they leave the HUB near my home. I see many really old clunky mail trucks around my state (Massachusetts) and have yet to see any electric versions. These are the times I think about the issue. And then I think, I haven’t really heard any green stats used in PR or marketing materials by the three carriers. And so I wonder “if significant progress was made, why isn’t it used as a marketing strategy? Maybe significant progress hasn’t been made.”
Dana, others did provide information regarding the USPS stats. It states above (and in a press release I foudn) that in 2008 roughly 43,000 out of the 200,000 USPS fleet is “eco-friendly” of some sort. That equates to 20% of the fleet. I can’t imagine another 31% has been added in just one year… but maybe.
The electric 2-ton and the three wheel wagon sound cool.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
From UPS Website
“Delivery Fleet: 99,869 package cars, vans, tractors, motorcycles, including 1,783 alternative-fuel vehicles”
Less than 2%. Does anyone know if UPS replaces more than 2% of their fleet per year?
Kudos to the USPS on their outstanding 20%.