Last week, I ordered one of these to take my vermicomposting efforts to the next level… and I got distracted before I even opened up the package.  It came in one of those Priority Mail envelopes…not made of papery material, but the plastic-like stuff.  It occurred to me that I didn’t know what this was made of, so I did some research…lo and behold it’s Tyvek.

Invented by the ever-lousy Dupont, supposedly Tyvek can be “recycled, incinerated or landfilled safely”.  I don’t know of any plastics being “safe” to incinerate…would you hang out around burning plastic?  Let’s just pretend Dupont is a respectable company and move on.

Why is the marketing so lousy on the shipping envelope for Tyvek’s recyclability?  It’s unfortunate when a product claims it’s recyclable, but in reality it’s not publicized, marketed, or simple to become a participant.  In this case, it’s especially stressful since mail-in programs are great.  Look at printer cartridge return programs or companies like Terracycle, for example…effective pre-paid shipping on all kinds of stuff has been out there for years.  On the Dupont website, it turns out that you can pay to send in a mailer full of mailers for recycling, so I will do this from now on…but who should be picking up the shipping cost?

Why is Tyvek used for a shipping envelope?  Its resistance to water seems to be the main selling point…maybe it’s cheaper too.  Anyway, here’s the tiny blurb that I discovered on the package:

The Cradle to Cradle certification is a highly flawed and controversial “seal of approval” that the Tyvek USPS mailers were awarded.  On the C2C website, the description of the C2C Silver rating sounds good at face value…until you compare it to their Gold and Platinum levels.  One of the Gold requirements is “NO problematic chemicals”…so then how many are in the Silver certification?  Gold also mentions having a plan for product recovery…does Dupont have NO plan?  Yeah, it’s next to nothing, but it’s something…and I really hope they improve upon it.

To show us their bottomless compassion, the United States Postal Service has a C2C certification video featuring some soulless bureaucrats giving vague answers that a 5 year old wouldn’t believe.  Am I really this stupid?  Believe it or not, I don’t like to hate on stuff…but the efforts shown here seem really hollow, don’t you think?