One Small Step: Green Your Address Change
April 19, 2009 by Jennifer
Moving is hard to green up. There’s a ton of gas, packaging, and disposables involved. You can green your move, but it takes some doing.
That said, one VERY simple green moving choice you can make is to change your address online.
According to the United States Postal Service, over 46 million Americans move each year. If everyone filled out a paper change of address form, that’s over 46 million forms a year (many households use more than one) and more than 20,000 trees are needed to create all these forms. Not to mention the gas everyone uses to get to the post office to pick up said forms.
USPS offers full service change of address forms online. This is one small and easy green step you can take the next time you move.
[image via stock.xchng]
You can also put a hold on your vacation mail online.
Having just done this, there are two things they don’t tell you here: 1) you have to pay $1 for “security reasons” to do this online and 2) they still send you all the papers you would get if you picked up the forms and did this at the post office (just to “make sure we got the address right”). Kinda laughable.
@Diana – thanks for the tip.
@Barb – they do charge you one dollar, but really, that’s not so bad. It’s better than having everyone use those paper form booklets. And I’ve done this the last few times I’ve moved, and they only send one small slip of paper as a confirmation each time. One slip of paper is WAY better than those change of address booklets which are huge and consist of lots of pages. Not so laughable.
I just did it a couple of weeks ago, Jennifer – they sent me an envelope as big as the one you pick up from the P.O.! They said it was to confirm the address, which I understand and accept, but then why send all those ads?
And I think the dollar is fine, but that they should let you know about it *before* you go through the process, not after you’re almost done with it.
Both of those things made me laugh.
I posted my comments so that other people reading your post would know about those things beforehand, not so that they wouldn’t do it; I’d still do it this way, which I will in a few months when we move again.
I wonder if it makes a difference where you live… I’ve never gotten a packet o’ paper as a confirmation, but even that one piece of paper I do get could be cut out. They could make it an email confirm, or maybe offer the option of one phone call. AND about letting you know about the dollar before hand; yeah, they maybe should. It’s just a dollar, so I spaced it, but I remember now that they have you fill out the form, then ask. Thanks for that reminder.
It is nice to see that people are at least starting to offer online options for sure. My hubs and I do a lot of Ebay stuff and are so thankful they have Paypal shipping online. It saves a ton in gas back and forth to the P.O…..so, hats off to those that are at least working towards this goal
Caroline (momma of 2 sweetie pies…one with the missing TWO front teeth now and the other healing beautifully from Eczema- thank you God and yay for Zorbees!)