July 1998
By Kim A. O'Connell
In snow or rain, heat or gloom of night, the U.S. Postal Service delivers our mail, but it also manages to recycle. Waste Age looks at how this large, quasi-federal agency has taken the lead.
Nearly every community in the country has a post office -- for corresponding by mail is as commonplace as brushing one's teeth. But how about recycling? Although the recycling industry has matured, is it as commonplace a practice in the world of business, or the world of government, as it could be?
As federal agencies struggle to comply with government directives on recycling, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has jumped ahead of its governmental peers, taking a leadership stance on recycling and waste diversion and unveiling several new programs and initiatives.
In late April, the agency held its third annual Environmental Stakeholders Conference, with a theme of "Sustainable Development in Postal Business." The conference focused on several environmental initiatives under way in the agency. At the conference's opening session, Keith Strange, USPS's vice president of purchasing/materials, emphasized the agency's commitment to environmentally sound" purchasing, noting that the agency has purchased $160 million in products made with recycled content.
Charles Bravo, USPS's manager of acquisition management and former manager of environmental management policy (EMP), noted that the agency took in $1.4 million in revenue from recycling in 1993. Last year, the agency took in $8 million in recycling revenue.
Other environmental programs are standouts as well. The agency has the single largest fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the nation. It has transformed undeliverable mail into compost and pencils and even lobby recycling bins (see sidebar). And the agency has solved a sticky" problem by eliminating the liner in its self-adhesive coil stamps.
"I'm not a tree hugger," says Dennis Baca, the Postal Service's new manager of the EMP department. "But I think there are things that every citizen in the world has a responsibility to do for the earth... If I can get people interested enough to do their part, to recognize [that they can] purchase something that's made of recycled products and it's just as good -- closing that whole loop -- if I can get the 850,000 [USPS] employees aware and conscious of doing that, then that will carry over into our communities."
Baca says success will be measured when all USPS couriers and clerks do the right thing" regarding recycling. To this end, USPS rolled out a new recycling guide this spring, designed to inform all USPS employees from managers to carriers about incorporating recycling into their day-to-day activities. Currently, according to the agency, more than 64% of all USPS facilities recycle.
The guide focuses on recycling undeliverable standard and bulk business mail, paperboard, and mail that is discarded in lobbies. The guide walks USPS employees through the main steps to starting a facility recycling program and discusses federal and other applicable regulations.
For example, President Clinton's Executive Order 12873, mandating the purchase of recycled-content paper by federal agencies, does not apply to USPS, a quasi-federal agency that receives no federal funding. But the agency has voluntarily adopted portions of the executive order as policy and outlines suggested recovered content standards for products.
Although the guide is meant for USPS employees specifically, it contains information that could be useful to other federal agencies and departments, and perhaps even the private sector. The agency has posted the guide on its public Web site, accessible at www.usps.com/environ.
"People say that recycling can't work, and we say it can," says Mike Fanning, USPS's program manager for recycling. "[The guide] is a policy document, but it's also like a how-to guide."
As for starting a recycling program, "the idea is first to work with potential contractors in the local market place," Fanning says. "In one part of the country, maybe it doesn't matter if the paper is mixed together or not. Someone might want to convert the cardboard flow. We're encouraging employees to talk to as many people in the community as possible."
Although people might first associate USPS with mounds of paper, the agency is in the business of electronics as well. To prove it, the agency has taken a leadership role in a new Federal Electronics Asset Management Task Force.
Sponsored by Federal Environmental Executive Fran McPoland, the task force is designed to increase recycling of electronic equipment and components used by the federal government. Some 28 federal agencies and departments -- as diverse as the Department of Energy and the National Security Agency -- are participating in the task force.
The idea for the task force came about when USPS officials noticed that the agency purchased a number of electronic components without a recovery or disposal plan, according to Fanning. "We had not planned for systematic end-of-life management for many of these materials," he says.
USPS has taken the lead in the electronics recycling effort with an initiative to recycle all its outdated integrated retail terminals (IRTs). IRTs are the computer systems used to sell stamps or other items. "It's complimentary to what [the task force] is attempting to do," says Bill Hayen, USPS's Southwest Area environmental compliance coordinator in Dallas, leader of the IRT recycling effort, and winner of a 1998 "Closing the Circle" Award for USPS.
"Because of our size and the fact that we're in 40,000 communities in the country, we're in a unique position" to participate in any electronics recycling effort, Hayen says. "We're kind of a key player in how this is all going to happen."
More than 60,000 IRTs were slated for the landfill -- at an estimated cost of $750,000 -- when the agency decided to investigate the feasibility of recycling them.
"We headed up a multi-functional group within the Postal Service, including our purchasing folks and material management people, and we looked at what this equipment was, whether it had any value," Hayen adds. "We looked at several different end uses, and ultimately, we found out the equipment had some value in it."
USPS contracted with Waste Management of Phoenix (part of Waste Management, Inc., Oak Brook, Ill.) to recover the IRTs and disassemble them. Although the terminals had little value in terms of direct reuse, they contain cast aluminum, which can be recovered in large quantities, as well as some gold and precious metals, Hayen says.
When the project is completed, about 95% of all the IRTs used by the Postal Service will have been recycled, Hayen predicts. The effort has already brought in more than $200,000 in new revenue.
"Our employees are finding innovative ways to preserve the environment and improve our business," said former Postmaster General Marvin Runyon in a recent briefing. "They found a way to turn a potential loss into a profit, while promoting good ecology."
Hayen adds that USPS also is recovering personal computers used by the agency in a manner that should serve as a model for the rest of the federal government. For instance, models that are 386s or smaller, and that have little value in a reuse situation, would be disassembled and the components recycled.
"For 486's or better, up into the [higher-powered] Pentium series, there's some reuse where they can be refurbished and provided to schools or perhaps to resellers," Hayen says.
USPS is examining its electronics at the cradle as well as the grave. According to Hayen, the agency is working with the University of Texas and private organizations about designing equipment it uses in a more environmentally sound way. The agency is even beginning talks about instituting a purchasing requirement that calls for new computers to have some percentage of recycled content.
"When we buy equipment, it's got a lifecycle," Baca says. "In the past, disposal of that equipment was never a consideration. My hope is when we start buying equipment that when we dispose of it we can find other uses for it...by finding a secondary market that would ultimately benefit the Postal Service."
As we approach the 21st century, USPS continues to seek new ways to promote waste diversion and recycling. In early June, the agency earned four more White House "Closing the Circle" awards for recycling -- USPS has been a consistent winner over the last few years.
Smaller projects crop up in USPS districts around the country, such as the Springfield, Mass., district, which recently embarked on a buy-recycled campaign. The district has published a educational poster to hang in post offices that says, "Buying Recycled is a First-Class Idea!" Playing upon some healthy competition within the USPS infrastructure, the Springfield District says it was the first of the agency's 85 districts to have all its post offices recycling, and the district recycled more than 3,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard last year.
"The Springfield District was inspired by America Recycles Day and has increased its effort to buy recycled," says Jesse White, a consultant assisting the district's recycling programs. "This year, the district started purchasing tissue and towel products made from recycled mail -- closing the loop on recycling at the post office."
"I hope that the Postal Service can continue to be recognized as a leader and have other companies come to us for insight and duplicate some of our successes," Baca says."One of the areas that I'll be looking at closely to partner with is the emerging small office/home office businesses that are occurring across the country. They're ordering supplies and probably using new technologies, and we can be that carrier of choice to take toner cartridges and used computers back to the equipment manufacturer to remanufacture it for future use, so [the businesses] aren't seen as contributing to the waste problem.
"I'm not a creator -- I'm more of a thief," Baca continues. "If there's a great idea out there, we'll take it."
To some extent, the Postal Service may have to be even more vigilant about environmental issues than other agencies or private entities simply because it is everywhere.
"A lot of people don't realize just how big we are," Baca says. "We have 40,000 facilities in the U.S.... We touch every person's life."
Greening the Mail: USPS Recycling Facts
|
This summer, when you're at the local post office sifting through your mail, you may have the option to recycle waste paper in bins made of recycled materials.
Post offices throughout the West Coast are taking part in a pilot program to test the effectiveness of the new bins. Manufactured by Gridcore, Inc. (Long Beach, Calif., and Dallas), the containers are made from undeliverable or read-and-acted-upon mail, as well as waste cardboard.
According to Sharon Marsh, an environmental specialist in the U.S. Postal Service's Environmental Management Policy department, the agency already made a practice of recycling when it realized that post office lobbies generated a lot of discards.
"So we were looking at putting out [a recycling bin] that was nice in appearance," Marsh says.
The Postal Service's environmental team underwent years of planning to create the bin, and officials even consulted with the agency's retail side on aesthetic issues. A recent redesign allowed the bins to pass a required fire-resistance test in February. To build the container, Gridcore picks up the undeliverable mail, mixes it with liquid, adds waste cardboard for strength, and creates a pulp. Gridcore then shapes the pulp into panels that it molds together to make the bins. Designed solely for collecting waste paper, the bins are octagonal in shape and about 17 inches by 36 inches in size, with paper-sized openings to limit contamination.
After the bins have been used for several years, according to Marsh, the Post Office will recycle them, instead of sending them to the landfill. The pilot program will focus on such cities as San Francisco and Los Angeles and will branch out from there, Marsh says.
"We're working on the pilot [program for now], and it will go nationwide shortly," Marsh says. "We're geared up to go as soon as possible." -- KAO
Last Revised 11/20/99
An INTERTEC® / PRIMEDIA Publication.
© 2000 All Rights
Reserved.
Reposted with permission 12/7/00.