What the world needs now is love letters, sweet love letters.

Before heart emoticons, relationship status updates, and sexting, there was a simple way to express love: the handwritten note. It sounds dated and antiquated now, which is probably a sign that the world desperately needs to bring it back.

Enter, The World Needs More Love Letters project, a worldwide community of “love letter writers” who compose and leave behind anonymous handwritten love notes in places where people who need them may find them. Started by Hannah Brencher, the project has brought more than 1,600 love letters into the world in the four months it’s been in existence.

Brencher is quick to clarify that the intention of the More Love Letters project isn’t to bolster profits for the U.S. Postal Service (though romantic notes are certainly a sexier use of the USPS than paying bills). Instead, it’s to spread love in a world devoid of it, and bring magic to people where they least expect to find it.

The More Love Letters project is as much about loving yourself as it is about loving others. Brencher’s latest initiative asks letter writers to turn their attention and affection inward. Through the entire month of January, writers are encouraged to jot down their hopes and goals for the new year on their very best stationery, and send those letters to the More Love Letters Time Capsule in a self-addressed stamped envelope. In 2013, the time capsule will be opened, and the letters returned to their authors.

“Our plan is to hold these love letters all year long,” Brencher writes on her blog. ”Compile them all into a big ol’ box labeled: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL JANUARY 1, 2013. And, in 365 days from now, we are going to mail those love letters back to you. Sealed and ready to be opened by the very same person who wrote that letter back in 2012, though maybe you’ll be changed. Maybe you’ll see life differently.”

To learn more and get involved, visit the More Love Letters project online.

Image: Sayed Mostafa Zamani

If you’re sending correspondence through the mail these days, why not design your own stamps to promote your green message?

Many sites, including Zazzle.com, allow you to either select from their designs or customize your own using photos or images downloaded from your computer.

If you decide to make stamps for a special occasion, remember to weigh whatever you’ll be mailing before you order so you can specify the correct postage amount. If you aren’t going the route of Evites or other email invitations, using stamps that say something special, and green, is a great option.

Here are ten designs I found at Zazzle with cool green themes:

1. Six Reasons to Plant a Tree

2. Fair Trade Only

3. Got Bamboo?

4. Dreaming of a Green Christmas

5. Hang Dry

6. Love Your Mother

7. Love it or Leave It

8. Kiss Me

9. Like No Tomorrow

10. Burn Fat Not Oil

Images: Zassle.com

Raising the price of our postage just isn’t doing it for the U.S. Postal Service which reports a $2.4 billion loss at the end of its third quarter (April 1 – June 30).

My kids did their part by sending lots of letters from camp, but most of America has seen a dismal decline in mail volume, which according to the Postal News has fallen by nearly 20 billion pieces in 2009 compared to the first three quarters of last year. Blame it on the widespread economic recession and electronic mail.

The good news is less paper. The bad news is the USPS which we depend upon through rain, sleet and health insurance legislation, is witnessing unprecedented declines in volume.

Third quarter mail volume reached 41.6 billion pieces, down 7 billion pieces (or 14.3 percent) compared to a year ago. That’s the largest consecutive three-quarter drop in total volume since 1971.

The writing is on the wall in terms of the end-of-year predictions. The Postal Service projects a net loss of more than $7 billion at fiscal year-end.

The losses are compounded by an obligation to pay workers $5.4 billion to $5.8 billion  annually to prefund retiree health benefits. At the same time, the third quarter saw a rise in workers’ compensation expenses, which increased $722 million (or 198 percent) compared to the same period last year.

Postmaster General John Potter says the Postal Service is maintaining a high level of customer service while facing continuing economic challenges. Hey, tell that to the West Portal branch, where we still have to stand in slow-as-molasses lines even when it’s not so busy.

Securing financial stability of the postal service will require cost reduction efforts, according to Potter, as well as further review of the health benefit prefunding.

“It also will require that the Postal Service gain flexibility within the law to move toward the five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market demands, and to work with our unions to meet the challenges ahead,” Potter adds.

It’s pretty typical that cutting costs in these cases means fewer employees, just like at the supermarkets, where the checkout staff is being phased out by machines and the lines keep growing.

Work hours were reduced 88 million hours in the first three quarters of fiscal 2009 and the USPS says it is right on target of its goal to cut work hours by more than 100 million for the entire year.

“That’s double the rate of last year’s successful work-hour reductions and the equivalent of 57,000 full-time employees, or 8.6 percent of our full-time workforce,” says Joe Corbett, chief financial officer and vice president.

How long do you think until we are using automated postal centers for everything we ship?

Images: USPS