Change Agent | Shawn Clark
Send Story to a FriendMIT tracks the trash
MIT Tracks Seattle trash
NY Times reporter MIREYA NAVARRO, filed a report on September 16, 2009 titled, “Following Trash and Recyclables on Their Journey”, in which she discusses a project by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to track the journey of trash and recyclable materials from their disposal to either recycling or dumping. To track the items, MIT researchers place a small electronic tag onto the items of trash, such as aluminum cans, papers cups, and a compact florescent bulb. Based on cell-phone technologies, the devices operate by battery for up to six (6) weeks, logging the journey of the item through the waste collection system. Currently, researchers have tagged trash in Seattle and New York with plans to expand the project to London.
Researchers hope that by giving “people a concrete sense of their impact on the environment…[it] might lead to them [to] changing their habits.”, said Carlo Ratti (Navorro, NYT, 9/16/2009) If a person can watch the travels of their plastic water bottle after its placed into the garbage or recycling bin, perhaps they will make more informed decisions about which products they purchase and how those products are disposed of.
Collection and waste management in the United States is a complicated business and has no central organization or industry-wide methods. Different companies, in different cities, handle waste in widely different ways. Driven by profit, dramatic price fluctuations for recycled materials may make it cheaper and easier to dump items then recycle them. MIT hopes the project will help to reduce wasted resources and increase recycling by identifying wasteful transportation patterns.
Analysis of the data will take researchers several months, however early data indicates that travel from curbside to the landfill or recycling plant can take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. Once the item reaches the landfill may not be the end of the story. A report issued by the Ocean Conservatory stated that plastic bottles and other items enter the ocean from streams that move run off from the landfills to the Ocean.
September 19, 2009, is the Ocean Conservatory’s Annual Beach Clean up. Last year over 400,000 volunteers collected over 6 million pounds of garbage from beaches around the world. The city of Seattle Waste Management moves over 2,100 tons of garbage a day. Please help protect the ocean from further damage by participating in community projects and practicing the five R’s of conservation: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refurbish, Respect.
Navarro, M. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/science/earth/17trash.html?_r=3&hp)
www.Oceanconservatory.org
Tweet This Post
Eleanor
September 18, 2009 - 7:35am
September 18, 2009 - 7:35am
I read an article about this on TreeHugger. http://bit.ly/qsYOp It was very interesting and I can't believe this kind of study hasn't been done before (maybe it has and just hasn't gotten to the press). I've heard various people say that it's so "American" to just chuck something in the trash bin and forget about it. Many of us never think twice about what actually happens to those eggshells, pizza boxes, or snack wrappers. It goes way beyond hauling the cans out for trash day. We don't realize how lucky we are that our garbage just gets taken away, not to be dealt with again. Honestly, it's very scary. I am eagerly anticipating this report and I hope it will change the way we look at trash!
Flag as spam/inappropriate
September 18, 2009 - 7:15am