Online postal mail forwarding for travellers

When you travel, what happens to your postal mail? I expect that most of you do what we do – just let it pile up somewhere, whether at the post office or in a box at a neighbour’s. But what if you’re going to be gone for a long time? In just 3 weeks we’re off to New Zealand for a month, so I’m researching the options. There are mail forwarding services, but paying to have catalogs and what turns out to be junk mail forwarded is not only unneccesary and frustrating, it’s bad for the environment (okay, travel is bad for the environment, but post offices are among the heaviest users of energy in many countries, and forwarding adds to that). Now there’s another option – online postal mail – that may be worth exploring (it’s only available in the US for now).

Earth Class Mail , based in Seattle, receives your mail each day, scans the outside of the sealed envelopes and presents these images to you online. With the click of a mouse, you then decide whether to have your chosen postal mail securely opened and scanned to be read online, shredded, recycled, or forward-shipped to any address in the world – similar to how you might manage your voice mails and emails. In September 2007 the company won a 2007 Brilliant Award for Business Innovation; the award celebrates solutions that go beyond “green” to generate real economic value while mitigating negative environmental impact. The “catch” that I see is that your mail is being forwarded to Earth Class Mail (at one of 20 addresses around the States), but it’s probably not being forwarded as far. The company has been expanding rapidly in the past year, and I’ll be watching for Canadian service to start.