My name is Brenda Adams and I’m a project manager for the Postal Service’s sustainability initiatives group in Washington, DC.
I’ve been with USPS for 30 years and with this group in one capacity or another since 2007; back then, we were called energy initiatives.
In this position, I manage the BlueEarth Federal Recycling Program and the How2Recycle program.
The BlueEarth Federal Recycling Program is a USPS sustainable mail service that more than 30 federal agencies use to refurbish, reuse or recycle small electronics. I’m the administrative manager for fedrecycling.com, which supports more than 43,000 contacts throughout the government. This year, we’ve helped the federal government recycle more than 295,600 pounds of electronics using U.S. Mail.
We also work with the How2Recycle program to use an easy-to-read package labeling system to help customers recycle or dispose of our packaging properly. We’ve been participating in How2Recycle since 2019 and have applied recycling symbols to approximately 200 USPS items, including Priority Mail and Ready Post packaging and printed publications.
I work closely with teams throughout the Postal Service, especially during the ad review process. It’s my job to make sure placement of the recycling label is in accordance with both How2Recycle’s standards and our own policies and that the label is visually consistent with the USPS brand.
One of the tenets of the Postal Service’s strategic plan is environmental stewardship, and I’m proud to help contribute to our objectives through the programs I manage.
Beyond that, I also help manage my section’s budget and pitch in where needed. I’ve been with the group for a long time, so I’m kind of like the sounding board for the team.
It’s never a boring day, and I like that.
“On the Job,” a column on individual employees and their contributions to the Postal Service, appears regularly in Link.
