A team of MIT scientists is embarking on a mission to track individual pieces of refuse through the American sanitation system. Cellular tracking devices are attached to specific items, like coffee cups:
A Starbucks cup's final journey.
The idea is that if folks saw the ridiculous paths their garbage took to get to its destination, maybe they’d think twice about what they were disposing of. Typically when your trash is picked up, its taken to a nearby processing facility (and sometimes not so nearby), strained of metal and other easily sorted recyclables, then compacted and buried in a landfill. Certainly sounds like a waste of energy.
If I could see actual GPS tracks of my “garbage footprints,” I’m sure that thought would pop in my head each time I opened the garbage bin in my kitchen.
