Smith, Jo Mei

In the past 24 years, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has decommissioned over 218,064 mail drop-off collection boxes due to lack of usage. The mail collection at these mailboxes is projected to drop even more in the coming years. This project's objective is to repurpose the decommissioned mailboxes into The Official Shredding System (TOSS). TOSS will be a publicly accessible shredding service located at official USPS locations to ensure security. TOSS will allow people to destroy sensitive documents and mail with personal information in a secure setting. The shredded documents will ultimately be recycled through the current USPS recycling system. The goal and research of the project is to demonstrate how interdisciplinary studies of graphic design and engineering can work together to address and solve social problems. The result of this project will be communicated in a concept manual.