What happens after we throw something in a garbage can? From the user’s perspective, it disappears once the trash collectors pick it up (if you live in an area with municipal trash collection, of course; I grew up in a rural area where everyone had to deal with their own trash). Where does it go? Sometimes items are taken to a dump not far from where it was thrown away and either buried, bulldozed into large heaps, or incinerated.
But Carlo Ratti, an architect who works with the SENSEable City Lab at MIT, directed a project to find out just how far garbage can travel, with the goal of helping us understand the “removal chain” that conveniently disappears our trash for us as well as we’ve come to understand the global supply chains that bring us items in the first place. His team asked 500 people in Seattle to tag items they would be throwing out anyway with small tracking chips. They tagged a total of 3,000 objects, everything from tin cans to cell phones to sneakers. And the results showed that some of the items we get rid of can go on a rather dramatic journey, traveling thousands of miles:
The Trash Track website contains information about the methodology and ideas behind the project.
Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for the tip!
Comments 7
PinkWithIndignation — October 4, 2011
Most of that stuff doesn't look like trash at all. When I see things like that being thrown away (like the shoes, book, stuffed animal, toys, cell phone, electronics) my only assumption is that someone or something peed/puked/pooped on it, or it's REALLY broken. You can give all that stuff to Goodwill and let them sort it out! If it really is trash, they will throw it away, but if it is not, they can sell it. Reuse!
PinkWithIndignation — October 4, 2011
I guess after seeing the video I'd like an explanation of how garbage sorting/dumping works. Like on the batteries: Who picked them out? How and why? Are there really lines of people picking through trash all day? Are batteries always picked out? Why did they end up in the mid-west? What will be done with them? This video raises much more questions than it answers.
Christopher Hutton — October 4, 2011
Do you know if there are any recorded documents of the results? I'd love to get a deeper look at one.
Laramelt — October 4, 2011
Given that many of those items could be recycled, I am not surprised that some of them traveled far. There are specialized recycling centers around the country that specialize in disassembling electronics and reselling what's useful. What I am surprised is that none of the trash seen in this visualization traveled to the whirling-plastic-trash in the middle of the Pacific, or ended up in China, where a lot of unrecyclable trash goes to rest. Is it because the chip would not transmit once in water (that's a bug that should be fixed, for research purposes) or that the chips weren't inserted in things that are really fundamentally unsave-able (say some kinds of plastic items)?
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