Go postal: Recycle your unwanted mail instead of trashing it.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—If your kitchen table is routinely buried under a pile of catalogs, promotional cards, solicitations, and other mail that’s outlived its usefulness, but you feel guilty about adding it all to a landfill, now you can take it back from whence it came. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is expanding its mail-recycling program, offering more locations where you can recycle all those catalogs, magazines, and direct mailings that aren’t accepted by your curbside recycler.

This USPS program actually started 10 years ago with bins placed in post offices across the Northeast. By adding 1,844 more locations, the postal service is cutting down its environmental impact while generating a little revenue on the side. The agency has collected more than $12 million by selling the recyclables it collects, says Darlene Casey, a communications specialist at Postal Service Headquarters.

THE DETAILS: The most recent figures from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste put the amount of standard mail (catalogs and bulk mailings) thrown out in 2007 at 5.9 million tons, or 2.3 percent of all our trash. Of that, 2.4 million tons (about 40 percent) was recycled. Compared to other categories of trash, that’s a pretty good percentage (only 6.8 percent of all plastics were recycled over the same time period, for example). But there’s room for improvement. Making a ton of paper using recycled fibers rather than virgin fibers cuts the amount of water used by 50 percent and reduces energy use by 30 to 40 percent . In addition, making recycled paper emits 75 percent less air pollution and creates 34 percent less water pollution than making paper from scratch.

WHAT IT MEANS: Now that mail-recycling programs are growing, you can get yourself out from under that mountain of mail without adding more trash to the landfills. Now you can declutter, conserve water and energy, and keep some pollution and greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, all at the same time.

Here’s how you can unburden yourself of unwanted mail, and cut down on the amount that ends up in your mailbox in the first place: