Trash fascinates me. Not so much the trash itself, but what happens to it once it leaves my house. Where does all that stuff go to after it gets picked up? What if you could find out?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is tracking trash in Seattle in order to learn more about the actual waste stream, impacts on urban design, and costs. They put “trash tags” on 500 items, 50 of which were put on at the Central Library on August 26th of this year.
Tomorrow, Saturday, September 19th through October 11th, a display on this project will be open at Central Library on the 5th floor. They will have a “live” projection of data coming from the trash tags as well as some artifacts from the project. In addition, MIT researchers are going to talk about the program at 11 am on Sept 19, in the Microsoft Auditorium. Which according to one Seattle Public Library employee, “should be very interesting—the MIT folks are really interesting and clever.” Visit the MIT site for more information.
Want to know more about trash in general? Visit our online encyclopedias and look up “waste disposal.”
One interesting fact that I learned was that many Seattle’s parks used to be landfills.
Push to Talk 