The Emerging Urgency of Mitigating Environmental Impacts and Potential Public Health Risks of the United States Postal Service

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe privatized, ‘quasi-public’ United States Postal Service (USPS) is the largest commercial entity sending and delivering letters and packages. USPS vehicles drive a billion miles/year, visit 150 million addresses/day, and stimulate fossil fuel mining and vehicle pollutant emissions, with significant environmental impacts and potential public health risks. Sending and delivering therefore constitute excellent candidate activities for optimization to reduce USPS and overall impacts and risks, which depend upon spatial relationships of local post offices and mail recipients. Recipients may receive mail passively, or pick it up at their post office. Under the USPS business model, recipients lack economic incentive for the latter, even if their post office is situated along their daily travel route. USPS can incentivize such customers by dividing the price of postage between two parties: senders, covering delivery of individual pieces to recipients' local post office; and recipients, in the form of annual subscriptions covering delivery of mail to their local address. This alternative model would greatly reduce the price of postage for senders, increase the number of recipients picking up mail at a local post office box to avoid paying for delivery subscriptions, reduce USPS and overall impacts and risks, and possibly restore USPS business volume and profitability.