The U.S. Postal Service has come up with a way to better protect your identity while keeping paper out of the landfill.

The Post Office Box Lobby Recycling program is expanded to 1,844 new sites this month, including all three Park City area post offices.

Many post-office-box users open their mail at tables within the office, read it there, and throw unneeded mail in trash cans in the lobby, explained Tamyra Wilson, retail specialist for the Salt Lake District.

Not only does this make the paper difficult to recycle, but makes it available to people who fish through trash for names, addresses and other personal information, she explained.

Participating offices, which include the Park Avenue, Main Street and Kimball Junction locations, received a locked blue box about two weeks ago as part of a “Read, Respond, Recycle” initiative.

The Postal Service is encouraging P.O. Box holders to read their mail on site, make a decision as to what to do with it, then recycle it on site if it’s not needed.

While this was already a habit for many, the program aims to get more people thinking about recycling and protecting themselves through safe disposal of mail.

According to a press release, more than $12 million in revenue was generated by the selling of recyclables as raw materials in 2008 by the Postal Service.

All types of paper are accepted so long as it will fit in the skinny slot in the top of the box.

Ronda Donica, Postmaster for the Park City area, said the Postal Service recycles as much as it can and the blue boxes are a way to alert the public to that fact.

“We’ve heard a lot of feedback and customers very excited about it,” she said.

The program was started about 10 years ago in the northeast and now there are nearly 6,000 participating offices in the nation.

The bins are a permanent addition to each of the offices where they have been placed, Wilson said.

Local recycling advocate Insa Riepen, executive director for Recycle Utah, said she finds the blue boxes cute and that size of container doesn’t really matter. Any kind of recycling is a good thing.

About 1 million tons of paper, plastic and other materials are diverted nationally from landfills through the Postal Service’s recycling programs, said spokesperson Joanne Veto.