With growing awareness of environmental issues, and so much interest in businesses “going green” these days, the mailing industry has responded with a number of interesting alternatives and guidelines that cover every aspect of your mailing activities.
I’m often asked the following question: “My retail business is very focused on being environmentally friendly. I successfully use direct mail to get new customers, but I’m concerned that using paper and ink may somehow be compromising my sincere intentions to run a ‘green’ business. Any suggestions?”
This is a great question. Here are a number of ideas you might want to incorporate to keep your business practices in line with your goals of reducing your environmental impact.
Materials
Paper: The obvious place to start is to use recycled paper, but that’s just the first step. Beyond that, you might look into new kinds of papers that are now available, such as those made with wood alternatives, such as sugar cane.
Also, you might look into biodegradable options for envelopes and paper to see if they’ll work for your needs. And if possible, use windowless envelopes so that they will be more easily recycled. Finally, for a fun element, there are plantable seed papers now. After reading your sales piece, the recipient can plant it and eventually watch wildflowers spring up! Wouldn’t that be a great option for a “Spring”-themed campaign?
Ink: Using the right paper is a great beginning, but if you use toxic ink, or ink that is difficult to strip from paper, you may interfere with the recyclability of your sales material. Printers are solving this issue now by using inks that are water-based, soy-based, or otherwise agri-based. These are less polluting to the environment and can be more easily stripped away during recycling.
Adhesives: And don’t forget the adhesive on your envelope and the address label. These “stickies” adhere to paper (that’s what they’re made to do!) and can be difficult to strip away during recycling. There are no green adhesive alternatives, but with a little planning you can cut down on the use of adhesives by creating self-mailers that don’t need an envelope (if that is appropriate for your specific sales pieces), using response cards instead of forms that need to be placed in an envelope, and eliminating address labels by printing names and addresses directly on the sales piece.
Engage your printer and paper supplier in your quest for a more environmentally friendly direct mail campaign by asking them about environmentally-friendly materials.
You don’t want to compromise on the quality of your sales pieces. After all, you still want them to sell! That’s their main purpose. But there are so many nice options available today, that you can still produce an attractive campaign – but one with an environmental conscience.
Process
In addition to choosing more environmentally friendly materials, you can also follow certain procedures to make sure you’re doing all you can to prevent waste. Here are some ideas recommended by the USPS:
- Regularly update and improve your mailing lists to limit duplication and waste.
- Use research to effectively target your customers. Folks who live in apartment buildings, for example, probably don’t need lawn services.
- Allow customers to opt out of your mailings to ensure you’re not sending them unwanted mail.
- Print on both sides of the paper to save resources and reduce mailing costs.
Do a Self-Assessment
If you want to create the most environmentally friendly campaigns possible, the Direct Marketing Association wants to help you do it. They’ve put together an interactive, online Environmental Planning Tool and Optional Policy & Vision Statement Generator. It was developed with the intention of being used by businesses like yours to:
- Assist in conducting an internal evaluation of environmental practices that affect aspects of your marketing process.
- Help you attain Direct Marketing Association “Green 15” environmental performance compliance.
- Generate an environmental vision statement or policy for your organization to consider and adopt.
It might be worth it to you to take a few minutes to go through the questionnaire which can be found at http://www.the-dma.org/envgen/ .
Awareness of environmental issues is growing, and it has created a market for environmentally friendly products and methods. As more businesses do this, the market will become more competitive and the costs of running a green business will go down.