Heard a story on NPR about this today- a group at MIT is throwing away garbage.
Oh, right, there’s an interesting part: they’re putting tags on individual pieces of the trash they toss, and they’re going show you where it goes on the internet. Can’t find the NPR write-up at the moment, but MITnews has a supportive explanation here. Check out the project’s website for the real goodies, though: pictures of where stuff you don’t care about anymore actually ends up (your plastic container of liquid soap might only be 15.5 miles away by now! Do you need a street address? They can do that for you).
Inherent humor value of smart people playing in the trash aside, I think this project will generate some important data that could convince people the stuff they toss doesn’t actually go away.
Wonder what the first thing to make it to the Pacific Garbage Patch will be?
This sounds like a great way to really see what happens to our waste – it will no longer be “out of sight.”
It will be interesting to see how much crosses state lines – and in the long term, how much is still around in the years to come.