one code
Summer Postage Sale – well, sort of a sale, no, more like a small rebate
summer sale
To those that are excited about the impending summer postage sale, there are a few details you need to know, first, did you receive a letter from the USPS recently?
Here is what it looks like: summer-sale-electronic-letter
Here are the details:
The USPS has made it official (almost) that they are going forward with the proposed ‘Summer Sale’ event. The PRC must still weigh in with their decision, which is expected in late May, to make this program official. This program would provide a 30% postage credit on mailings submitted between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. This incentive program is designed to increase mailing activity during the usually dormant summer months, when the USPS has their most excess capacity available.
Unlike most sales however, there are a multitude of qualifiers that apply to the Summer Sale.
Who and what qualifies?
For the most part, the USPS has already determined what mailers qualify. Letters were sent out on 5/7/09 to approximately 3,200 mailers whom they determined will be eligible for this program by utilizing the mail volume data that exists within their internal system.
1. This program only applies to Presorted Standard letters and flats.
2. The next qualifier is that you must have mailed a minimum of 1,000,000 pieces during the time period of October 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008. Total volume is calculated by mailer, so even if you utilize multiple permits, your total volume will be calculated across all permits that are associated to your organization. This also applies to “Ghost Numbersâ€, which are created if your mail is sent through a Mail Service Provider. If you feel you are eligible, but have not received a letter, then you can request a contact by emailing your information to summersale@usps.gov.
If you have met the criteria above, you are ready to begin to calculate the ‘Sale’ portion of the program. The 30% postage credit will be given only on the number of mail pieces that exceed your mailing threshold for the time period of July 1, 2009 to September 30, 2009. The caveat to this all is that your mail volume in October must not fall below your mailing threshold for that month. If this occurs; the total credit accrued from mailings between 7/1/09 to 9/30/09 will be deducted by the amount of pieces that fell below the threshold in October and that will be the final credit. The credit will be issued at some point in December of 2009 once the USPS has completed the above calculations.
How to calculate your potential savings:
Below is an example of how to calculate the savings that you as a mailer may receive through this program. Listed in this example is the all important Threshold, which will be the key to planning your mailings to take advantage of this program.
1. Base volume (7/1/08 – 9/30/08): 500,000 pieces
2. Trend:
a. Volume 10/1/08 – 3/31/09 = 1,800,000 pieces
b. Volume 10/1/07 – 3/31/08 = 2,000,000 pieces
c. a/b = (1,800,000 / 2,000,000) = .90 or 90%
3. Base x trend = Threshold:
500,000 x .90 = 450,000
4. Rebate = (Actual volume – threshold) x (actual postage cost / actual volume) x 30%
a. Actual volume for 7/1/09 – 9/30/09 – threshold =
475,000 – 450,000 = 25,000 pieces
b. Actual postage cost / actual volume =
$103,075 / 475,000 = $0.217
c. Rebate =
25,000 x $0.217 x .3 = $1627.50
The October Effect:
It is important to keep your mailing volume for October in mind when factoring the potential savings. If your volume falls below the calculated threshold, then your overall credit will be impacted. Below is an example of how to calculate this effect.
a. October 2008 volume x trend (in #2 above) = October threshold:
300,000 x .90 = 270,000 pieces
b. If October 2009 (260,000 pieces) < October threshold:
Threshold – actual = adjustment
270,000 – 260,000 = 10,000
Rebate adjustment
a. Actual volume – summer sale threshold – rebate adjustment:
475,000 – 450,000 – 10,000 = 15,000
b. New rebate:
15,000 x $.217 x .3 = $976.50
For those of you that have received a letter; be sure to certify the volume that the USPS has provided to you since this will be a binding once you have agreed to enroll in the program. Also be sure to have your response in by August 1st, 2009.
This program is a great way to potentially reach more customers at a lower cost and therefore enhance your business’ ROI. The system is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction for the USPS to utilize their new found pricing freedom to help mailers.
From the Federal Register today:
Federal Register Notices
DATE: Pending publication in the Federal Register.
Standard Mail Volume Incentive Program (aka Summer Sale)
AGENCY: Postal Serviceâ„¢.
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY:
The Postal Service is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®), to add section 709.2 which introduces new standards for a special volume incentive program for mailers of Standard Mail® letters and flats with mail volume exceeding their individual USPS™-determined threshold levels. The program period will be from July 1, 2009 through September 30, 2009.
EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kevin Gunther at 202-268-7208.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
The Postal Service is implementing a volume incentive program for qualified high-volume mailers of commercial or Nonprofit Standard Mail letters and flats, for volume mailed between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009, above their USPS-determined threshold level. This program encourages mailers to provide new volume and to take advantage of our current excess capacity to process and deliver additional volume.
Monkeying Around with Postal Pallets
Monkeying around with postal equipment
From the Dead Tree Edition
Where have all the pallets gone, U.S. Postal Service officials sometimes wonder.
The Postal Service spends millions of dollars annually replenishing the supply of pallets, tubs, mailbags, and the like because so many get diverted to other uses each year. Pat Donahoe, USPS’s COO, explained to the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) recently that, sometimes, getting the pallets back is no easy matter.
He displayed the following photo from a major U.S. zoo to prove his point.
Do you suppose there’s an Intelligent Mail barcode on these orangutans?
People Try Twitter One Month, Then Fly
From PC World Wednesday, April 29, 2009 4:22 AM PDT
It’s good to know I am not alone: Many other people use Twitter a few times and can’t think of a good reason to come back. With all the hype about Twitter’s 140-character version of living, I’d gotten the impression that I’m the only one on Twitter who doesn’t get why Twitter matters.
Not so, according to Nielsen data that shows 60 percent of people who use Twitter one month, even at its peak popularity, don’t come back the next. While it used to be that 70 stayed away that improvement is not much to brag about–Twitter’s customer retention is prone to peaks and valleys.
Twitter needs to be concerned about this, especially since both MySpace and Facebook have failure to return rates only about half that of Twitter. Put another way, 60 percent of MySpace and Facebook users come back the next month, about the same percentage that do not return to Twitter on its best months.
It is easy to think of reasons for this. Twitter is a one-trick pony. If you do not like tweeting or reading the tweets of others, there are not a whole lot of reasons to return.
Both MySpace and Facebook, for all their problems, offer more services than Twitter. It is easy to see how places where users can do more things could make the two services “stickier” than Twitter.
This does not surprise me. Twitter feels really light to me. Some people, obviously, become addicted but large numbers of others just walk away. That is not such a big deal right now as Twitter is in major growth mode. Growth hides all manner of sins.
However, if that growth mostly results in new users sampling and leaving, the growth will not last. Worse, it may be hard to get those unhappy users to return should Twitter ever expand its product features.
It is not clear whether Nielsen’s measure of Twitter’s return rate counts people, like me, who use a third-party application for their twittering. I do not return to Twitter nearly so much as I return to TweetDeck.
Today, it would be much easier for TweetDeck to make money off my use of Twitter than it would be for Twitter itself. Again, I do not see how these social networks ever make the big money that investors are betting they will.
To be honest, I am using Twitter mostly because I think “it’s good for me,” like some sort of social network vitamin. Like most good intentions, it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. Nevertheless, I am pretty certain to make it into next month.
I’m sure Twitter will be happy.
David Coursey tweets occasionally, and reached by e-mail using www.coursey.com/contact.
Spain’s Banco Santander Makes a U.S. Deposit
This is a great article about the power of data modeling and analytics and the amazing effect it can have on a business, from Business week, April 15th.
With its Sovereign Bancorp purchase, Santander takes its strong acquisitions record to the American market
Madrid – Spain’s Banco Santander has every right to be smug. While rivals were jumping into investment banking and complex derivatives, Santander stuck largely to its plain-vanilla retail operations in Europe and Latin America. That extra-safe strategy helped Santander rack up $11.7 billion in profits last year even as its peers were hemorrhaging cash.
One place Santander has largely avoided is the U.S., but that’s about to change. The bank in October paid $1.9 billion for the 75% of Reading (Pa.)-based Sovereign Bancorp (SOV) that it didn’t own already. Emilio BotÃn, Santander’s 74-year-old chairman, plans to use Sovereign’s 747 branches and 2 million customers in the Northeast to muscle his way into U.S. retail banking. That will involve spending some $400 million by 2012 to upgrade back-office technology, retrain staff in marketing techniques, and consolidate a far-flung management team. The deal will make the U.S. Santander’s No. 3 deposit base, behind Britain and Spain.
While the expansion may be a gamble in these tough economic times, Santander has a strong track record in acquisitions. In Spain, Britain, and Latin America, the bank has followed a similar strategy: Buy a small stake in a local player to get to know a market, then jump on bigger game when they come up for sale. In the past two years, Santander has spent some $31 billion on nine deals across three continents. “BotÃn always has been a hunter,” says Robert Tornabell, former dean of ESADE Business School in Madrid.
But cracks are appearing just as BotÃn embarks on this U.S. adventure. In 2008 the bank’s nonperforming loans doubled, to $8.9 billion—2% of Santander’s portfolio—and they’re expected to double again this year as Spain, Britain, and Brazil hit the skids. A $3.1 billion loss related to Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme also has tarnished the bank’s credibility. “Even Santander’s conservative retail banking model won’t do well in the current climate,” says José Manuel Campa, a finance professor at IESE Business School in Madrid.
Not so, says Santander Chief Financial Officer José Antonio Alvarez. He says bad-loan provisions—mandated by Spain’s central bank—will ensure that Santander can weather the crisis. He also notes that Santander has a healthier loan book than most of its rivals. “We only invest in markets that we understand well,” Alvarez says.
And BotÃn knows how to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and pound from customers. Branch managers use in-house technology, dubbed Parthenon, that provides constant updates on clients. The system analyzes accounts and suggests products, such as credit cards or home equity loans, that customers are likely to want. And it flags clients who are falling behind so the branch can work out a payment plan. “We know who pays and doesn’t pay, and the exact services to sell,” Esther Sanchez, a manager with Santander unit Banesto in Madrid, says as she thumbs through client files.
GROWING PAINS
Santander plans to replicate the strategy at Sovereign. Last year productivity at 30 branches around Philadelphia jumped by 50% when managers started using Santander’s selling techniques. That pilot program has been expanded across all Sovereign branches, a move Santander expects could net the bank $215 million in savings over the next three years.
Still, Sovereign carries some risks. Santander already has written down $2 billion of Sovereign’s questionable assets. And the Spaniards want to get rid of a further $10 billion in loans by yearend. Despite those growing pains and its troubles back home, Santander remains confident about the U.S. “It’s not about luck,” says Juan RodrÃguez Inciarte, the bank’s strategy chief. “We make decisions at the right time.”
Old Navy, Chrysler, Palm among Top 12 Brands Likely to Disappear
Goodbye old friend
From Marketing Charts, April 20, 2009
As the recession deepens, economic forces continue to drive consolidation in the retail industry, debt comes due and increasingly discerning consumers buckle down on discretionary spending, an analysis by 24/7 Wall Street predicts that a number of well-known brands are likely to disappear before the end of 2010.
To determine which brands are most likely at risk, 24/7 Wall Street examined 100 large brands it believes are in trouble and, for each, looked at public financial records, sales information, analyses from industry experts, the competitive landscape in each’s industry and the likelihood that a brand could be sold off in the case of parent-company financial trouble.
The analysis points to the most serious peril for the following 12 brands which, 24/7 Wall Street says are most likely to disappear by the end of 2010:
1. Budget rental cars: Though Budget’s parent company currently says it will continue to operate both the Avis and Budget brands, increasing debt problems, a weakening travel industry and intensifying competition will nonetheless cause the demise of the Budget brand, 24/7 Wall Street predicts.
2. Borders books: Declining sales, heavy losses and pressure from competitors Barnes & Noble and Amazon – especially from new e-book readers – may prove too much for the brand when large amounts of debt come due in April 2010.
3. Crocs footwear: The decline in stock price from $72 per share in late 2007 to $2 today, ongoing financing issues, consumer belt-tightening and the end of a fad, leads to to 24/7 Wall Street’s declaration that “Crocs won’t make it through the year.â€
4. Saturn vehicles: As General Motors faces bankruptcy, 24/7 Wall Street said it will almost certainly shutter the brand, whose sales dropped 59% in the first quarter of 2009.
5. Esquire Magazine : While the Esquire brand is plagued with ad revenue declines and intense competition in the crowded men’s-magazine market, parent company Hearst faces problems on both the newspaper and magazine fronts and will not hesitate to close down underperforming brands such as this one to bolster its overall position.
6. Old Navy apparel: 24/7 Wall Street said that parent company Gap – which currently markets the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic brands – is “a three-brand company living in a two-brand body†and cannot continue to sustain all three in the midst of steep, across-the-board sales declines. Old Navy, which is the weakest brand, will most likely not survive.
7. Architectural Digest Magazine: Amidst drastic cutbacks in high-end home sales and expensive redecorating, the once-healthy publication has lost 47% of its ad pages this year. Faced with other financial problems in its newspaper and magazine businesses, parent company Conde Nast will not be able to sustain the brand, according to 24/7 Wall Street.
8. Chrysler brand cars: Facing similar problems to GM as it teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, Chrylser LLC will not be able to support product design, manufacturing and marketing for a brand with many less sales that Dodge or Jeep as it gears up for restructuring.
9. Eddie Bauer: Faced with declining sales, a stock price under $1, major debt problems and a CCC- rating, analysts say its lack of differentiation in the marketplace could prove the last straw. 24/7 Wall Street said it could be out of business by mid 2009.
10. Palm: A brand that 24/7 Wall Street says has been “at death’s door for some time,†faces life-threatening competition from RIM and Apple, and can only survive in the unlikely event that it can expand the smartphone market by increasing demand for its “Pre.†Dismal financial results and association with Sprint, the already-#3 US wireless carrier, will spell complete disaster.
11. AIG: The once-venerable insurance giant’s highly publicized financial problems, involvement in the financial crisis and subsequent bailout and indebtedness to the federal government, make it the “one large brand in America which almost everyone would like to see disappear,†according to 24/7 Wall Street. Because many of the company’s operating units do not bear the AIG name, they will continue to do business as they distance themselves from the “toxic†AIG parent brand, which eventually will go away.
12. United Air Lines: As the travel industry faces unprecedented overcapacity in light of the recession, two of the large US carriers will soon need to merge to avoid bankruptcy. While it is not clear yet how such a consolidation will shake out, the stocks of UAL, American and US Air have plummeted. 24/7 Wall Street believes that United – the weakest of the carriers, soon faces a “merger,†which will most likely mean the end of the line for the brand.
Gangs running standover drugs-in-mail racket
I knew mail service is much tougher in other countries, but this is ridiculous…
From perth now
April 20, 2009 09:15am
ROMANIAN crime gangs are forcing innocent Australian residents to receive illegal drugs through the mail.
Many of those pressured into taking delivery of heroin, cocaine and amphetamine parcels from overseas are fellow Romanians.
Gang members rely on their legendary reputation for extreme violence as insurance against victims dobbing them in.
They prey on people with no criminal record or history and tell them parcels will be posted to their addresses.
The victims are ordered not to open the parcels and are told to whom they must hand them.
Some of those who receive the drug parcels are paid a small amount for doing so, but most are forced to do it for nothing.
The Australian Crime Commission’s 2009 report into the $10 billion-a-year organised crime market reveals “scatter importing” through the postal system is a common method of smuggling heroin and cocaine into Australia.
A senior underworld figure, and a former Australian Federal Police agent who specialises in Romanian crime gangs, separately told The Daily Telegraph about the Romanian-run mail racket.
“Millions of dollars worth of drugs – mainly heroin and cocaine but increasingly the more popular amphetamine-based pills – have been imported to Australia in this way and continue to be,” the underworld source said.
The former AFP agent – who is still involved in investigating Romanian gangs as a private investigator for insurance companies – said the parcel racket was centred on Victoria.
“They’re able to get away with it largely undetected because they put the fear of God into the people who receive the drug parcels,” the former agent said.
“Romanian gangsters have little or no respect for human life.
“They will burn your house down, bash you or kill you if you oppose or expose them.”
Why Every Major Green Group Uses Mail
My kids were recently assigned a project in school about going green. The kids will learn about all different types of pollutants and what they can do to prevent waste and promote a greener planet. Pretty neat project right, I thought so until I started to hear more details. I wish that all the facts surrounding subjects would be presented. The supposition that junk mail or direct mail is a contributor to waste and the loss of forest is quite simply a fallacy. Of course direct mail contributes to waste-about 2%-which goes to landfills and unlike water bottles or diapers does breakdown. And as far as destroying our forests, that is simply not the case. When it comes to forest lands, says The New York Times, “the acreage is essentially the same as it was a century ago, and there is over 30 percent more wood volume per acre than in 1952.” (See: Family Matters, Generational Shifts Loom for Big Tracks of American Woods, June 14, 2007). The following article from the Association for Postal Commerce provides additional insight.
Every major environmental and consumer organization uses the mailstream to raise money, gain members, promote causes and distribute information. Larger groups send out tens of millions of items annually.
When asked if Greenpeace was contributing to the nation’s environmental problems because the group uses direct mail, Peter Bahouth, a former Greenpeace executive director, once told ABC News that “accusing environmental groups of paper pollution is a bit like saying that we need to get the ambulances off the street because they’re loud.”
You can check for yourself by looking at the IRS Form 990 which most non-profit organizations are required to make available to the public. More than 1.5 million non-profit groups are listed at GuideStar.org, and many post their Form 990s for public review.
Why do major ecology groups use the mails? Just take a look at mail and the waste stream.
How much garbage is produced each year?
According to the latest-available figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States produces 13 billion tons of nonhazardous solid waste each year. The EPA calls this material Subtitle D waste. (See: RCRA: Reducing Risk From Waste, EPA, EPA530-K-97-004, September 1997, page 5.)
Thirteen billion tons in the mid-1990s! That seems impossible. Is there an environmental organization with similar numbers?
Yes. As an example, Greenpeace has research showing that we produced 11.3 billion tons of Subtitle D waste in the 1980s.
Also, the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in 1997 that “the United States produces between 12 and 14 billion tons of waste annually. This includes mining waste, oil and gas waste, agricultural waste, hazardous waste, food-processing residues, demolition debris, incinerator ash, and medical waste, in addition to municipal waste. The management of most of this waste is not regulated by U.S. federal law — it is exempt — and of the total, municipal waste accounts for only about 210 million tons.” (See: Too Good To Throw Away: Recycling’s Proven Record, Chapter 2)
The problem, of course, is that more recent Subtitle D figures are needed to better understand waste issues, information which the EPA has not made available to the public.
What is municipal solid waste?
In general terms, “municipal solid waste” or “MSW” can be seen as a limited number of items which are part of the overall waste stream. As the EPA explains: “MSW — otherwise known as trash or garbage — consists of everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, and batteries.” (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 4)
Does MSW equal all the stuff that goes into local landfills?
No. “Some people assume that ‘municipal solid waste’ must include everything that is landfilled in Subtitle D landfills,” says the EPA, but this is NOT correct. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 25)
“It has been common practice,” says the EPA, “to landfill wastes such as municipal sludges, nonhazardous industrial wastes, residue from automobile salvage operations, and construction and demolition debris along with MSW.” (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 25)
But wait a minute. Doesn’t the EPA say that the number of landfills has declined substantially during the past decade?
The EPA says two things: “The number of landfills in the United States is steadily decreasing — from 8,000 in 1988 to 1,654 in 2005. The capacity, however, has remained relatively constant. New landfills are much larger than in the past.” (See: Basic Facts: Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), EPA, June 1, 2007)
In other words, older, smaller and less ecology-secure landfills are being replaced with a small number of larger sites which can benefit from new technologies and better management.
However, the idea that landfill capacity is “relatively constant” is simply wrong. The amount of available landfill capacity is actually growing. As The New York Times has reported:
“It became clear in the early 1990′s that there was a glut of disposal space, not the widely believed shortage that had drawn headlines in the 1980′s.
“Although many town dumps had closed, they were replaced by fewer, but huge, regional ones. That sent dumping prices plunging in many areas in the early 1990′s and led to a long slump in the waste industry.
“Since then the industry and its followers have been relying on time — about 330 million tons of trash went into landfills in the United States last year alone, according to Solid Waste Digest, a trade publication — to fill up some of those holes, erase the glut and send disposal prices skyward again. Instead, dump capacity has kept growing, and rapidly, even as only a few new dumps were built.” (See: Rumors of a Shortage of Dump Space Were Greatly Exaggerated, August 12, 2005)
Where can I get more information regarding the landfill glut?
Press here to see our complete report.
How much MSW is there?
While the overall waste stream consists of some 13 billion tons of nonhazardous materials, MSW is just a small fraction of that amount. In 2005 we generated 245.7 million tons of MSW — 1.89 percent of the non-hazardous waste stream. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 1)
Do 245.7 million tons of MSW go into landfills?
No. MSW in 2005 included 245.7 million tons of material before recycling, composting and energy recovery. The amount left to landfill was 133.3 million tons. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 2)
Aren’t we landfilling more MSW than ever?
No. MSW generation is down. Recycling and composting are both up. The result is that MSW landfill use has declined.
For instance, the EPA reports that we landfilled 133.3 million tons of material in 2005 — that’s down from 134.4 million tons in 1980 — a time when the population was substantially smaller. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 2)
How long will it take to pack our landfills with MSW?
More than MSW goes into landfills, so the issue involves a wider array of waste than MSW by itself. No less important, we are now adding landfill capacity faster than we are using it.
The New York Times has reported that between 2001 and 2005 the nation’s three largest trash collectors — Waste Management, Allied Waste Industries and Republic Services — “buried 882 million tons of waste. But the remaining permitted capacity of their combined 410 dumps did not shrink. It expanded over those four years by more than one billion tons. The three companies now expect expansions of another 1.8 billion tons. At that level, their combined capacity could handle the nation’s trash sent to dumps for about 26 years.” (See: Rumors of a Shortage of Dump Space Were Greatly Exaggerated, August 12, 2005)
Not only are the three largest private companies increasing landfill capacity, the same is also true for other private and public facilities. This is happening because we are landfilling less and also because landfill technology is improving — we can get 30 percent more stuff into a given amount of landfill space than in the past, according to the Times. Equally important in the case of paper-based materials, scrap that used to be landfilled is now being exported to China.
Will we soon run out of landfill capacity?
No. In their 2005 annual reports, the three major collection and disposal companies told the Securities and Exchange Commission that they have enough landfill capacity today to last for decades — without further expansion.
We will develop new landfill sites using the latest and best environmental techniques — certainly as good as the technologies we use today and no doubt better. However, efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle should continue not only because they limit landfill needs, but because such practices are inherently good for the environment and for us all.
If annual Subtitle D waste totals 13 billion tons or more, why have we not run out of landfill space already?
Because much of the “waste stream” is nonhazardous industrial and production water, mining debris and agricultural waste that is left in place and not landfilled.
Is there any source which shows billions of tons of Subtitle D waste broken into categories by weight?
Yes. An official 1988 EPA study entitled, “Report to Congress: Solid Waste Disposal in the United States,” (EPA/530-SW-88-011) details Subtitle D categories. On page 11, Volume 1, is a table showing more than 11,387 billion tons of waste, including 158 million tons of MSW. In 1988, of course, we had a population of 244,498,982, while today our population has increased by more than 55 million people.
How much MSW is in the form of paper products?
Paper and paperboard products amounted to 84 million tons in 2005. However, paper-based products have traditionally had high recovery levels. While the general recovery rate for MSW is 32.1 percent, the recovery rate for paper-based products is 50 percent — meaning 42 million tons were diverted from America’s landfills. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 7)
What’s the biggest paper-based product found in the waste stream?
Paper-based products are divided into two groups by the EPA: non-durable goods (44.91 million tons) and containers and packaging (39.03 million tons). (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 37)
Among non-durable goods, newspapers are the largest category at 12.05 million tons. For containers and packaging, the largest category is corrugated boxes at 30.93 million tons. (See: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 37)
How much advertising mail is included within MSW?
Advertising mail totals 5.83 million tons before recycling. However, 2.09 million tons is recycled, a recovery rate of 35.8%. Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2005, EPA, page 37)
So how much of the waste stream is advertising mail?
Using EPA data, as a Nation we have 13 billion tons of Subtitle D waste. We also have — before recovery — 5.83 million tons of advertising mail. In the worst case, advertising mail thus represents 0.000448 of the waste stream — about 4/10,000ths. After recycling, of course, the percentage is even lower.
Police: Postal worker threw away mail because it was printed on inferior paper
The discerning postal employee…
A former postal worker in upstate New York has been arrested for tossing mail.
Glen Helmer was arrested Thursday morning and charged with destroying mail he was supposed to be delivering.
According to the criminal complaint Helmer admitted to throwing away bulk mail circulars.
Investigators caught Helmer in the act when they followed him on his route last summer.
It is estimated that Helmer tossed business mail between 100 and 120 times during the last eight years.
On the criminal complaint, Helmer said he didn’t like the flyers because they were printed on inferior quality paper.
Helmer’s next court appearance is set for June.
Pompous self-righteous dork
Ok Ok, my feelings are expressed in the title of this blog, I just don’t get it, and maybe I’m the idiot dork. What would the world be like without mail? Do you think you won’t get bills or other bad news? Do you know how many industries are supported by direct mail, what are you thinking? And do you think that little of savvy direct marketers that they think they can just use, as you call it “spam” or email instead of direct mail? If it were that easy and effective don’t you think this would have been done long ago? Is this really the bright spot of the economic downturn, less junk mail, is it really that bothersome? All questions i would love to know the answers for.
 You tell me, check out the video:
It ain’t easy!!!
YONKERS – Police have charged a Yonkers woman with attacking a 50-year-old male postal worker as he delivered mail on Wednesday morning.
The woman, identified by Yonkers City Police as Rosemarie Santos, 20, approached the mailman and claimed that her monthly benefit check was in another person’s mailbox. When the postal worker did not open the other mailbox, she became enraged and punched and scratched the man. She also stole his Bluetooth headset and refused to return it.
Police arrested Santos and charged her with second-degree robbery. The letter carrier was treated and released at a local hospital for a laceration to his left hand.
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