Canada Post is greening up its act. That means the environmental footprint of all your letters and packages is being reduced, as is the carbon cost of all that junk mail.

“We travel about 80 million kilometers every year,” says Anick Losier, director of media relations for Canada Post. “We’re in every single community in Canada. We have three times as many postal counters as there are Tim Hortons.”

For the past three years, Canada’s national postal service has been working to reduce its significant greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by the end of this decade. 

“We’re using more environmentally-friendly vehicles, and are testing a fully electric vehicle to see
how it can fit in Canadian winters,” Losier explains.  “This is already producing some significant results, just in the past year or so.  We’ve seen about a five per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

There’s also a massive, nationwide overhaul of the company’s infrastructure. Old, outdated facilities are being closed, and new, LEED-certified buildings are taking their place.

Paperless transactions are being encouraged as well.

“We were the first out of the gate, 10 years ago, with ePost,” says Losier, referring to Canada Post’s online bill-payment service. “People wanted to be more green and were seeking alternatives to paper.  Now we’ve got 2.8 million users monthly.”

But when many Canadians go to their mailboxes, most of what we receive is advertising. A significant portion is thrown out immediately – and not all of it gets recycled. How can that environmental impact be eased?

“People who do not want to have the flyers -what we call Ad Mail – can register on our website for the Consumer’s Choice program,” she says.  “They will be on a list when the letter carrier delivers your mail, and will not receive flyers.”

The program has been available for 10 years, but remains unpopular.

“We only see about six per cent of Canadians registering for it,” Losier notes. “It was designed to offer alternatives to Canadians. We know that they want to be more environmentally friendly. We want to make sure that they know we understand how important it is to them.”