One Man’s Trash is…Well, Trash: MIT Announces Trash Track Program
Would you be so cavalier in throwing out a disposable razor if you knew how much it actually impacted your local environments? Would you think twice about purchasing a bottle of water if you knew how much it cost you to dispose of? That’s the question asked by the MIT SENSEable City lab these days. And they plan to see what effects one man’s trash actually has on the environment.
Inspired by the Green NYC Initiative which aims to increase the rate of waste recycling in New York to almost 100 percent by 2030 (currently, only about 30 percent of the city’s waste is diverted from landfills for recycling!), a group of MIT researchers have developed a program that uses special electronic tags in order to track different types of waste on their journey through the disposal systems of New York and Seattle. Its name? Trash Track. Trash Track will monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal while raising public awareness about the impacts the garbage can under the sink has on the environment.
Plasma gasification has the potential to be a breakthrough technology. It can serve not only as a method of producing fuels, but also as a method for effectively dealing with hazardous wastes. In fact, the technology was initially developed to be a method for waste disposal, and the energy production potential was just a side benefit.
Simplifying Recycling: The Missing Piece?Editor's note: Welcome to the first edition of Q&A, where Green Options writers answer your questions about greening the good life.
