Capture and destroy
USPS recently introduced a service to help reduce the more than 1.4 billion pieces of undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail returned each year.
Secure Destruction, a USPS Blue Earth sustainability initiative, allows mailers to have letter-sized return-to-sender First-Class Mail captured and securely destroyed at postal facilities for no additional charge.
Using the Intelligent Mail barcode, mail that must be destroyed for privacy reasons can be securely shredded and recycled at a USPS mail processing plant, rather than being shipped back to the sender.
The program benefits both USPS and mailers, Chief Sustainability Officer Tom Day said.
“The Postal Service is able to reduce its operating costs and carbon emissions associated with returning this mail, and mailers are able to reduce the in-house costs of handling and destroying return to sender mail,” Day said.
The program ensures the security of the destroyed mail by following industry standards for confidential information.
Additionally, mailers benefit from increased reporting capabilities. Specific data for all of the mail processed for destruction is entered in the mailer’s database daily to provide updated information for future mailings.
To learn more about the process, visit the program website
“Secure Destruction” ?
Is that the new name for the FSS machines ?
Reducing carbon emissions? Destroying UAA mail in the plants? I know the LLV’s and trucks pollute, especially these death trap LLV’s, but I hardly believe there are significant carbon emissions coming from plants other than heating. The USPS will try to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes, acting like we’re ecologically responsible now.
Well, replacing the fleet will help, but how many trees are destroyed in a year to make paper for bulk rate horseshit nobody reads and the direct mailers make a killing off? If management charged rates that actually turned a profit that would be one thing, but I think the USPS loses money overall with their idiotic rates, but they help management get their much deserved bonuses, don’t they?
This would work except that there is no way of knowing if each piece of UAA mail is actually UAA. CCAs and disgruntled carriers do not care where the mail returned from the street winds up. As long as this mail isn’t at the case, they don’t get heat from management.