Snailmail should be a thing of the past
It never ceases to amaze me how much mail makes its way to my letter box. Letters from banks, insurance companies, utility providers and the likes, not to mention all the spam that defies the ‘No Junk Mail’ sign. I could quite happily live without any of it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it all just got delivered by email? I’ve asked most places to do it, but they refuse for various reasons (kudos to my mobile telecom 3 for doing it though). Paper-based mail has a number of fundamental problems: it’s a waste of paper, it’s inconvenient to archive and there is no guarantee of delivery.
But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I recently stumbled across Earth Class Mail. They promote a great concept. Basically you have a managed PO box with them as your mailing address. All your snailmail goes to them and through a web portal you can decide what to do with your mail: have it shredded, scanned or forwarded to your real address. In that way you can receive all your mail as PDFs in emails. Much easier to archive and much easier to find again when you really need it.
Unfortunately these guys do not support PO boxes in Australia yet. They do say they’re happy with international customers, but I would expect lots of institutions being sceptical about having an overseas PO box. Very disappointing, but hopefully something like this will be available in Australia in the not so distant future.
For me that would be the perfect setup. And if we all started doing this, perhaps all the institutions would eventually realise that they should send all their letters out through email in the first place. And a heck of a lot of paper would be saved.
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