• by Aaron Baar , June 15, 2015

In the world of electronics, environmental initiatives often come in the form of proper or responsible device disposal. In its efforts to remain environmentally conscious, however, Sprint is also applying environmental responsibility to how it communicates with its consumers, particularly those who opt for paper communications.

Having developed an environmentally friendly, reusable “ecoEnvelope” for customers who were receiving paper bills in 2012, the company is now launching a pilot program to use a greener paper for its customer mailings. The new paper uses mostly wheat-straw byproduct in its creation, which requires 50% less land area to produce a ton of paper than paper made from 30% recycled content. 

“This is one of those situations where we’ve only had tree-based options, and we thought there were other options worth exploring,” Keanon Swan, manager of strategic partnership alliance at Sprint, tells Marketing Daily. “The ecoEnvelope was a pretty big event and we needed that to soak in [before launching another initiative].”

Sprint, which has received accolades for its environmental programs from Frost & Sullivan, Compass Intelligence and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has already reduced the total weight of the printing paper it has purchased through reducing mailed customer correspondence and online practices by 83% since 2007.  

While those gains are significant, there are still many customers who prefer to receive paper mailings from the company, Swan says. Switching to the new paper will make even those communications more environmentally friendly. 

“We’ve made significant gains in our use of paperless adoption,” Swan says. “[But] if the customer decides to communicate via paper, we want to do the most responsible practices on every front.”