via [ Trash | Track ]
Researchers at the MIT, with funding and support from Waste Management and other organizations, have been using custom-made sensors planted on hundreds of pieces of trash in New York City, Seattle, and London to track the circuitous route that trash take…

The goals of the project are to make trash collection, recycling, and disposal more efficient, and to raise awareness of the resources and energy needed to manage the trash in our throwaway societies.
The project includes wonderful visualization and Information graphics as a way to bring clarity to the “removal-chain”. The project is part of the exhibit Toward the Sentient City
The information design is the work of a team of designers headed by E Roon Kang.
Imagine a future where immense amounts of trash didn’t pile up on the peripheries of our cities: a future where we understand the ‘removal-chain’ as we do the ‘supply-chain’, and where we can use this knowledge to not only build more efficient and sustainable infrastructures but to promote behavioral change. In this future city, the invisible infrastructures of trash removal will become visible and the final journey of our trash will no longer be “out of sight, out of mind”.
Elaborated by the SENSEable City Lab and inspired by the NYC Green Initiative, TrashTrack focuses on how pervasive technologies can expose the challenges of waste management and sustainability. Can these same pervasive technologies make 100% recycling a reality?
Team members include:
Carlo Ratti: Director, Assaf Biderman: Associate Director, Rex Britter: Advisor, Stephen Miles: Advisor, Kristian Kloeckl Project Leader, Musstanser Tinauli, E Roon Kang, Alan Anderson, Avid Boustani, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Lorenzo Davolli, Samantha Earl, Lewis Girod, Sarabjit Kaur, Armin Linke, Eugenio Morello, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Jill Passano, Renato Rinaldi, Francisca Rojas, Louis Sirota, Malima Wolf
Thomas What I am Looking at