Smarter Statements

In 2009, individuals in the U.S. received approximately 4.5 million tons of junk mail - much of it was never opened. What can we do stop unnecessary waste? One thing is smarter statements.

According to www.41pounds.org, the average adult receives more than 800 pieces of junk mail a year- at a transportation cost of $550 million a year, and 44 percent of junk mail goes to the landfill unopened.  In addition, approximately 40 percent of the solid waste in landfills is paper and paperboard. We need to stop this unnecessary waste.

Electronic statements avoid using trees (a renewable resource!), but they also have a negative impact on the environment when you consider their full lifecycle with chip factories, the data center energy crisis and the e-waste crisis. Some companies, however, may be more interested in saving the cost difference than the environment.

With innovations like renewable energy, server virtualization and e-waste take-back programs, electronic statements are becoming more sustainable, one data center at a time. Likewise, paper statements are becoming more sustainable, one print shop at a time, with breakthroughs like inkjet printers that use less energy, paper with lower environmental impact and mail optimization practices. Mail can be optimized through address cleansing to reduce returns, postal code sorting, combining statements for households and innovative ideas like reusable envelopes.

One of the energy inefficiencies associated with traditional statement printing is the need to heat all of the paper, including the white space, to melt the toner into it. Inkjet printers can use less energy by drying the paper only for the amount of ink that is used. Going beyond energy considerations, print shops can use paper with recycled content, lighter weight paper, or paper made with mechanically pulped paper, which uses half as many trees as chemically pulped paper.  And paper with chain-of-custody certification helps ensure it comes from sustainable forests.

Promotional inserts often are included with traditional paper statements. They are increasingly being replaced with promotional messages that are printed directly on the white space of the statement as an "onsert." This approach is known as TransPromo. It is a great sustainability story because it delivers on all three aspects of sustainability - environmental, economic and social - for a triple bottom line benefit.

TransPromo creates smarter statements that offer increased relevance and more targeted communications with less waste generated. In a recent pilot, TransPromo reduced the amount of paper used previously for a statement with inserts by 40 percent or 10 tons per million statements.

In addition to reducing the waste mailed to consumers, TransPromo reduces inventory waste by printing the statement background and the promotional material on demand. Relevant onserts also start to shift consumer perception by making mail worth opening for promotions, and they also can deliver higher response rates for businesses.

Consumers are changing their habits. Think about how many people you know who use reusable bags instead of disposable bags. They are interested in making better choices. And a smarter, more sustainable statement is a viable choice and a small way to make a very big difference.

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