Circular economy in the Postal System

What if the USPS defined it’s future value by stepping into sustainability innovation? This design team identifies customer touchpoints and infrastructure that are both sources of insight and opportunities for high impact change.

United States

March - April '23

What external trends might impact this opportunity space?

What of the existing postal system should remain unaltered?

What public and/or private sector partners could produce new value?

What might be repurposed?

Maitri P.
Runak C.
Stephanie K.
Vy P.

Rather than focusing on steps the client might take to achieve the goal, the designers make a "what if" statement to take their audience directly to the point.

This puts the client in a position to become an active stakeholder in the well known problem of waste management.

This scenario, presented through a low fidelity speculative object, drives the audience directly into a vision of a possible future they could bring to life.

The design team noticed through participant observation that the end customer already interacts with the system to sort their mail and packaging.

They also noticed how customers are provided with organized materials asymmetrically: order only exists before the packaging is used.

By abstracting the material patterns, the designers revealed some preliminary spatial designs for transforming unsorted materials to sorted materials after use.

The design team arrived at two propositions for circular economies to become the source of new value for the postal system.

Proposal 1

Design spaces for post use materials in the “front stage” of the post office

Proposal 2

If the physical space is designed for post use, this creates experience design opportunities for postal system customers and workers.