The Boston Globe just published a story about how pieces of trash have been tracked to their final destination in the Greater Boston area and will soon be tracked in other cities. The tracking project, initiated by MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory, has been developed in the "hope that tracking the trash through the disposal system - and making it viewable in real time on a blog - will cause consumers to give more thought to what they are tossing out."
How cool! I've often wondered if one of the reasons why some people do not recycle had anything to do with the fact that what they throw out magically "disappears." Of course, we know that it doesn't magically disappear, as demonstrated by the giant plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean; however, for the vast majority of Americans, what we throw away is out of sight and out of mind. I hope this MIT project serves as a means for people to feel more responsible about what they throw at the Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment