Every time you get a bill in the mail (well, nearly every time) or when you get yet another credit card offer, there is a reply envelope inside. It may be a BRE - Business Reply Envelope - where the company providing it pays the postage, or a CRE - Courtesy Reply Envelope on which you get to put a stamp.

Either way it takes two envelopes to complete the transaction - one coming, one going. And more than 80 billion reply envelopes are sent through the mail each year. That’s a lot of paper! The USPS has now approved a line of re-usable (”round-trip?”) envelopes manufactured by ecoEnvelopes, a company out of Stillwater, Minnesota.

According to CEO Ann DeLaVergne, eliminating return envelopes saves energy, water, and forest resources and reduces the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Every one million ecoEnvelopes used saves an estimated 250 million BTUs of energy and 37,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses. All ecoEnvelopes are manufactured on certified papers from managed forests using up to 100% recycled content.

But what is also interesting is that while the ecoEnvelopes can reduce mailing costs between 15% to 45%; they also seem to increase response rates up to 8%. And we all know that with response rates, every improvement helps! Take a closer look and request samples at the company’s website, here>>