adrianmiles' Flickr photostream/Creative Commons

To help better understand where our trash goes and what happens to it when it gets there, a new project is underway, overseen by M.I.T.’s Senseable City Laboratory, which will follow 3,000 pieces of common trash through the waste disposal system.  While not everyone may want to know the gritty chronicles of their trash and recyclables, hopefully the program will help people more clearly understand our impact on the environment and encourage us to make wiser choices.  According to Carlo Ratti, director of the lab:

If you see where a plastic bottle ends up, a few miles down the road in a dump, you may want to get tap water or some other container for the water.

The program uses tiny battery-powered tags based on cell phone technology to track each item, and while some tags may be crushed in transit, enough are expected to survive to help provide municipalities and waste management companies a vivid picture of how they can make waste disposal more efficient and effective.  Recycling is great, but if recyclables aren’t properly sorted or a company finds it cheaper to just trash them, they can head straight to the landfill, spoiling all your tidy efforts to do the green thing.

To learn more about the intricate pathways that trash travels, check out our Talking Trash series, and go read Elizabeth Royte’s Garbage Land.  And use the action link below to find out how to properly dispose of your trash and recyclables.