Big Brother - Spying On Your Waste?

Greetings,

I was very interested to hear about the recent scheme of waste tracking which is being implemented by MIT, 3000 pieces of rubbish in London, Seattle and New York will be fitted with hi-tech tags which use mobile phone technology to send out a real time tracking signal. In effect this means that MIT will be able to watch exactly where the waste is moving to in real time.

The aim is to highlight exactly what happens to the waste we throw away and that it doesn't always end up where we think, sometimes it will even end up in a completely different country, where the approach to waste management is not as stringent and as such it can end up becoming a pollutant.

The BBC have written a quite extensive article about the technology behind the transmitters and what MIT are hoping to achieve in the lifetime of the project.

I think that projects like these are great tools to raise awareness of our throw-away lifestyle and that waste doesn't simply disappear when the bin man collects it.

Onwards & upwards!

Lucy.