Wheeling, Ill. – BÖWE BELL + HOWELL (BBH) today announced the filing of a patent application for the BBH MAILStream Inveloper system, an eco-friendly mailing system that dynamically creates personalized bills and statements at significant savings over traditional mailpieces. The system and its innovative design enables the creation of documents in all standard formats on a single machine, delivers significant improvements in efficiency, and dramatically reduces paper costs and usage by as much as 40 percent.
 
The reduction in environmental impact associated with the MAILStream Inveloper is significant. As one example, BBH estimates that a mailer who processes 50 million envelopes in a year creates 44,500 pounds of wasted material. And although responsible mailers recycle these materials, there is a cost and waste associated with recycling that can be reduced or completely eliminated by using the MAILStream Inveloper.
 
"We believe this is the most ecologically friendly mailpiece format in the industry," said Mark Van Gorp, BBH vice president of business development. The system uses roll-fed material to create a universal mailpiece that replaces the traditional elements in a statement or invoice: the envelope, statement, promotional inserts, remittance and business reply envelope. Because the outside and business reply envelopes are eliminated through this patent-pending process, the waste associated with shipping, storing, handling and printing these materials is also avoided.
 
The new mailpiece is produced on the BBH MAILStream Inveloper, a high-speed system capable of processing up to 30,000 mailpieces per hour. Introduced at PRINT 09, the system is green and lean, supports transpromotional messaging, and provides radical improvements in efficiency and cost savings.
 
"We are extremely proud of these innovations, and given the customer benefits provided, we fully expect competitors to follow our lead," added Van Gorp. "Our new innovations represent the very highest level of corporate responsibility while delivering the highest level of efficiency. They also are available now."