The first thing I thought of when I heard about the new US Postal Service “green stamps” was this logo at right.
I suppose I’ve dated myself identifying this, but I can’t help it. For the baby boomer generation, S&H Green Stamps are as familiar a logo as Coca-Cola and the always entertaining roadside Burma-shave messages. According to Wikipedia, during the 1960s, the S&H rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest publication in the United States and the company issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service. So, it seems ironic to have USPS issuing “green stamps” now.
When the USPS decided to issue their own “green stamps”, I figured the first thing they would hit on would be global warming and CO2 reduction. After all, they have a green page at USPS.com and they have climate change figured greatly with a carbon footprint calculator. Have a look: http://www.usps.com/green/
Surprisingly though, when you watch the promotional video, there’s no stamp that says anything about global warming or CO2. Even the official USPS press release has no mention of global warming, climate change, or carbon footprint. That’s just strange. Maybe they realize that it has become “Voldemort” in Washington.
USPS created a whole new plate of “forever” stamps that will hold their value even if the rates go up….only one problem, the message is just a leeetle bit off where most consumers want to be. Watch the video:
I think they need to work on the message just a bit more. The “forever” message on this stamp (and others) was really just a bit too much I think.
I’m fine with energy conservation, I practice it myself. But really, forever is a long time. I had to laugh at the juxtapositioning of the message and how they are revealed in the video. The other one that made me cringe was “use public transportation”…forever.
Perhaps it was so familiar to them, they missed the unintentional gaffe. Only a bureaucrat could miss this silliness. Or, maybe it’s a new brand of not-so-subliminal messaging. Either way, I don’t think it will work.
As George Monbiot recently put it:
It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.
Of course I’m sure the USPS will be just as successful at promoting this new green message via “forever stamps” as they are with their primary mission:
U.S. Postal Service Lost Record $8.5 Billion in 2010
USPS lost 2.2 Billion in one quarter
I think I’ll buy a bunch of the old ones .
I guess the USPS didn’t get the memo. Obama is now pushing for more drilling as long as the oil patch paints everything green. Perhaps USPS could add a big green derrick to the stamps.
As an entity whose business model involves losing great quantities of money while delivering pieces of dead trees via petroleum powered vehicles that journey in 50 feet long increments, the USPS dare not mention CO2.
Wow. Whatever else they are, those are some mighty ugly drawings.
No doubt the Postal Service wants us to turn off lights and not drive cars. Back when we didn’t have lights or cars the Postal Service was #1 and FedEx and UPS were not players. They want to turn back the clocks to 1870 when they were #1.
Note on their web site, they claim to be the first fed agency to publicly report greenhouse emissions. Wonder how much money they wasted on collecting and reporting the data.
Not that I care about the CO2 but, nobody has mentioned it.
Not the government nor the environmentalists….
USPS must has a huge carbon footprint and nobody says a word.
Isn’t that strange?
Nobody?
The USPS is to be pitied rather than scorned. Their cash cow, first class mail, has been snatched from their maw by email. The low hanging fruit has vanished, leaving only residual mail that absolutely must be delivered as hard copy, like tax refund checks. Like my tax refund check that was delivered to an address eight miles from where I actually live. Okay, I take back what I said about pitied rather than scorned.
“choose to walk forever”
No thanks, i’d rather arrive. 😉
Shouldn’t it say “Forever or until the USPS goes out of business, whichever comes first”?
🙂
John Who,
Unfortunately, it would take a Constitutional amendment to put the USPS out of business. They know that, so their “service” is even worse than it would be otherwise.
My dad used to work for the US Postal Service. Many were the times he’d come home with a description of their latest lame-brain idea to “optimize” mail delivery. We had many a good laugh at their expense. They weren’t breaking even then; they aren’t breaking even now.
Anything that is not profitable is not ‘sustainable.’ Getting out of the red would be the greenest thing the USPS could do.
Stuff like this is part of the reason the USPS lost billions recently and will be clammering for a postal increase soon, which will cost- more “GREEN.”
On another site there was an article about the post office loses. A number of the comments strangely suggested that postal worker be forced to walk. I pointed out that doing that would not get the mail delivered any faster. However, I now thinking that if they want to follow their own advice that wouldn’t be bad idea.
Smokey: No it wouldn’t. The Constitution allows Congress to create a post office it doesn’t mandate that they do so.
Green is expensive stuff.
Look at all the money the USPS has lost.
If you had really dated yourself you would have mentioned Gold Bond and Gold Strike stamps as well.
Maybe I’m naive, but I kinda like the thought that things appearing in my mailbox do so under threat of mail fraud laws, do not contain computer viruses, and reassure me that “I may be a winner….”, although its mostly just bills.
Who looks at stamps anyway, my eyes are so bad nowadays it doesn’t really matter what they put on them.
The U.S. government debt is “forever” so I fully support it reducing its footprint by 30% or more. The first thing it could do would be to ban all Federal employees from participating in frequent flyer programs while on official “business.” This would especially apply to climate scientists who notoriously spend great amounts of time flying all over the world in the name of reducing carbon emissions.
USPS? Wow, electrifying their trucks, which still look like leftovers from WWII. And losing money all the way…
OK, so here is my UPS (counter-USPS) story of last week – I ordered an iPad from Apple, which offers free 3-5 day shipping. It shipped last Tuesday and they attempted delivery at my US address in San Jose, CA at 8:35 Friday morning. So then I looked a the tracking report. You will never guess where the shipment originated on Tuesday morning – CHINA. From the factory in China to Hong Kong – Ankorage AL – Louisville KY (lost a day due to bad weather) – Oakland CA – San Jose CA on Friday AM. When I called them on the phone to make sure that the delivery was going to happen, they answered on the first ring (no phone tree), and with the tracking number, instantly reported that it had been signed for at 3:05 by Mr. Williams when the driver returned at the end of his run to try the delivery again. Wow.
UPS and Fed Ex make very good money providing this kind of phenomenal service, while USPS loses money delivering for-profit non-time-critical junk mail. Moving to Panama, USPS mail delivery (and the reams of junk mail that comes along with the occasional check or bad news from the government), is something we positively do not miss. Oh we do get mail – you drop by the town post office and the lady behind the counter, who knows our names by now, looks in the cubby hole marked “H” for our fat IRS checks. /sarc
Curiously, green stamps, or more generically redemption centers (since there were competing varieties of stamps) were the only notable oversight in a wonderful book that surveyed features of the 50s (& 40s) that are no longer with us, Going, Going, Gone: Vanishing Americana. Items it listed included rotary phones, milkmen, automats, carbon paper, phone booths, house calls, stockings, etc. Here’s the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Going-Gone-Vanishing-Americana/dp/B000IOEQCG/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305425597&sr=1-4
To me it looks like more “feel good” stuff. It doesn’t change a thing, but makes someone feel good.
We are witnessing the momentum of a meme. The message disappears while the behavioural patterns remain. Like cuffs on pant bottoms, faux pockets on jackets and small chrome arrows on the hood fronts of cars, these “green” stamps reflect a strict statement that had a reality but that reality has become lost. This is a very good sign for the death of the warmist movement.
We are seeing the birth of an appendix: where once global warming and climate change refered to an actual event, it now refers to an environmental “goodness”, like picking up trash in the neighbourhood evolved from “pollution control” in 1968,
I still have a hand saw that I bought as a teenager with S&H stamps. Mom would let us buy things with the books we put together. I’m 49 now and have pointed out where the S&H store used to be to my kids. Here in Texas, HEB grocery stores had Texas Gold Stamps too.