running with paper

Years and years and years ago, I was the proud owner of a shiny new ATM card. It came in its own indestructible pouch, and was a perfect spot to tuck daily receipts in for later check book balancing.

Even after I got a proper billfold, I kept it for small change, folding money, and cache for business cards. You could not wreck that thing – and when it got grungy, I’d wash it and keep using it. It did eventually wear out, but it gave me many years of excellent use.

Eventually, my mail began including priority mail packages in the USPS-branded Tyvek envelopes – great for protecting papers in my canvas bag, and flipping inside out to send packages back out again. It wasn’t as easily recyclable then as it is now, (though I’d argue that mailing it away because local centers don’t take #2 plastic isn’t “easy” enough for Lazy Lizzie), so I had quite a pile until I moved to a community that did recycle them.

Although I never got an anonymous nastygram from an uninformed postal worker, I did inquire, after a few uses, on the “okayness” of using a used envelope for remailing (the guidelines are linked here, but they do not differentiate between “new” and “reused” materials). I spoke several postal employees, but each time the answer was generally “Uh, I don’t see why not, if it’s already been used.”

But the answer is a stubborn “no”, it seems. No remailing, although I don’t know of a federal law that prevents us from cutting them into drink coasters. A shame, since changing rule to exclude used envelopes from the remailing ban and policing it as media mail is policed would go a long way to being quite a bit greener.