Postcomm have agreed to most of the basic points raised by Royal Mail’s request to offer discounts to mail that meets certain environmental criteria.

The discount level should be between 0.3p and 0.7p per envelope posted which meets the right standards – not much in itself – £3 to £7 per thousand against a total mailing bill of around £400 to £450 per thousand.

But it is a start. Whether it is enough of a discount to make companies become more environmentally positive is unlikely however. Those who are already using the right sort of paper will just pick up their discount, while I suspect the rest will simply ignore what they will see as a trivial discount.