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ROYAL MAIL has announced a pilot scheme to be introduced in Manchester to transform post boxes into interactive email stations to promote the reduction of paper correspondence.
We’re thinking this might provide an on-street water cooler moment as people meet up.
The scheme has already begun with the recent reduction in the number of post-boxes in Manchester city centre from 43 to 7 ‘mail beacons’ arranged in a pentagram.
The mail beacons will still contain a hole for post to be deposited during the transitional phase with the size reduced from roughly the size of an average paperback novel to the size of an iPhone.
“We’ve reduced the size of the letter aperture because people had been posting bulky items which meant a lot more work for us,” said Royal Mail’s director of environmental commerce Damien Pat.
The new boxes will allow each resident to log-in to a Royal Mail account to transmit via email, or write a message on their iPhone and post the iPhone. The new system will also help in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint.
Pat told Confidential “We chose Manchester for the prototype after conducting extensive market research into the mailing patterns of residents in 20 major cities across the country. We found the people of Manchester send, on average, only three letters per year, yet spend immense amounts of time on Twitter, other social media sites and on various electronic communication. We’re thinking this might provide an on-street water cooler moment as people meet up to send messages.”