Willkomm is a specialist in "assistive technology" — equipment or systems to aid people with disabilities — and the author of two books on simple ways to transform everyday items into useful devices. She has devised what she says is as many as 62 practical applications for the corrugated plastic signs. On Monday, she will hold a lab for UNH occupational therapy students, who will learn to transform the corrugated plastic into tabletop stands for tablets, wheelchair cellphone holders, hands-free feeding devices, and other gadgets that will be given away to seniors and people with disabilities.

A copy of Therese Willkomm's book on easy-to-construct assistive technology solutions, resting on a holder she made from a discarded campaign poster.

With Tuesday's presidential primary approaching, University of New Hampshire professor Therese Willkomm has a plan to recycle one kind of political detritus: the thousands of leftover plastic campaign signs touting candidates who, win or lose, will soon pack up and leave the Granite State.

Once the political trash-talking is over in New Hampshire, what happens to the trash?

"I want students to learn that wherever they go, there's going to be corrugated plastic, and show them how to teach people how to repurpose it," Willkomm said Thursday.


Willkomm, who refers to herself as "MacGyvette," said she discovered the utility of corrugated plastic in 2010. She was examining a discarded real estate sign, and realized she could turn it into a portable, foldable stand for her new iPad.

"I thought, if I could make this, what else could I make?" she recalled.

During the 2012 presidential race, she realized that signs favored by political campaigns come in sizes that are easily reworked into easels for flip charts, or holders for three-ring binders. She contacted campaign offices, locating troves of signs that would have otherwise been sent to landfills.

UNH professor Therese Wilkomm cut up an unwanted campaign poster to repurpose. Therese Willkomm

Out of the plastic, she fashioned one device that allows a person with limited arm movement to eat a sandwich without assistance. Another design allows you to perfectly place a scanner over a document, without hassle, every time; a blind person can use it for a smart phone app that scans a text document and reads it aloud.


Willkomm does not sell her inventions; she donates whatever she and her students produce to facilities for seniors or people with disabilities. She holds workshops and publicizes videos on how to refashion corrugated plastic in minutes with nothing more than household tools and inexpensive adhesives.

She estimates that she, her students, and participants in her workshops, have made "about 5,000 things" with corrugated plastic, including "around 500" produced by an Eagle Scout in Arizona who later donated them.

"People are sending me photos all the time, from all over the country," she said.

As the country awaits the results of Tuesday's primary, Willkomm will be anticipating the arrival of the day after, when she can start asking campaigns for their signs.

"I've just about run out of my 2012 election signs," she said. "I've got to restock."

But what about the names on the signs? Would a Trump supporter really want a tablet stand emblazoned with Ted Cruz's name? Would a Bernie Sanders devotee want to keep documents in a Hillary Clinton binder? Willkomm says her experience with Obama signs suggests that this will not be a problem.

“All you can see is the red, white, and blue colors,” she said. “You can’t make out the words.” New Hampshire primary

David Filipov can be reached at David.Filipov@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidfilipov.