Turn postal mail into email

The folks at GoodCleanTech recently highlighted a remarkable new online service that has the potential to kill off your classic postal mail by converting it into online messages.

Earth Class Mail is a rather simple yet profound idea that takes some explaining. In a nutshell, you change your mailing address so that your mail (or at least the mail you select) is delivered not to you but to an Earth Class Mail processing center. There, the envelopes are scanned, and you receive images of them in an email message.

You look over the envelopes and decide which ones can be recycled or shredded immediately. When you need to look inside an envelope, an Earth Class Mail employee (with a government security clearance and working under the gaze of a video camera), opens the mail, scans the contents, and sends you an image. If you need the original document, it will be forwarded to your home. The cost: as little as $9.95/month.

This is the kind of thing that can make you stop and think. Imagine how much this service could improve your life, especially if you travel frequently or maintain several homes.

Still, there are aspects of it that I don't quite understand. For example, a huge benefit would be the ability to flip through and delete junk mail at the touch of a button, but I don't know where my junk mail is coming from, so I can't tell the senders to send it to an Earth Class Mail address. You can't simply eliminate your home address and forward everything there because you still need your address for magazines and packages.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.