MIT Project Tracks Seattle's Trash

08/27/2009

When we talk about the stuff we buy, or consumer goods, you've probably heard of something called the supply chain. But what about the removal chain? That's the path garbage or discarded items take once we toss them. The Public Library and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have teamed up to track some of our local trash. The goal is to see where trash ends up, how it gets there and if there are ways to improve the waste management process.

Outside Seattle's Central Library, about a dozen people wait with armloads full of old stuff. They've got faded trophies, ragged teddy bears and broken appliances. One by one, they'll hand over their stuff to a team of MIT students — who'll jot down some notes and prepare the items for tagging.

Kloeckl: "So let's just get started with whoever was first."

One of the first people in line calls herself Mrs. DeGroot. Her first name is Dawn. She runs a charm school in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood.

DeGroot: "And that's why I go by Mrs. DeGroot. And I've been calling my husband Mr. DeGroot for 22 years."

Mrs. DeGroot and her teenage daughter brought a pair of well–worn brown slippers to be tagged and tracked. They once belonged to Mr. DeGroot.

DeGroot: "And he loves his slippers. He's a man of slippers, Mr. DeGroot. And so he wanted to give them more life. He wanted to give them a reason to live."

An MIT student takes one slipper and drops in a tag about the size of domino inside. To secure it, she pours in a mixture that creates something like a shell of hard foam around the tag.

The electronic tag is actually something you'd find inside a cell phone.

Kloeckl: "And you can look at them as stripped down cell phones basically, which don't have any components but their radio module that allows for sending data, for transmitting data."

That's Kristian Kloeckl, the project leader. The team will put these devices in hundreds of items. Then, the owners will discard them just as they normally would have. From there, the project uses cell phone networks to track the items in real time as they move from place to place.

Kloeckl hopes the information will shed new light on how our complex garbage and recycling systems work.

Reporter: "I imagine you could potentially find some holes in the system if something ends up where it's not supposed to end up."

Kloeckl: "Yep. I mean, we might. We could. We don't know anything yet. Pretty much every large–scale system has loopholes, has unexpected side waste and the interesting thing is really to look at it in terms of wanting to improve the system. "

Another goal of the project is to raise public awareness about the downstream effects of garbage and recycling.

Mrs. DeGroot says she's already started to think about the stuff she buys and how she gets rid of it.

DeGroot: "Oh it makes me feel totally guilty and totally overwhelmed. Because it's a little overwhelming when you think about all the trash and all the people. And it feels like it's kind of, coming to get us."

But, it seems old habits die hard. She starts to have second thoughts about tossing the slippers.

DeGroot: "I kind of want them back!"

Reporter: "Well at least you'll know where they end up in case you need to go get them."

DeGroot: "That's true. What if we just decide we can't live without them?"

In that case, she'll at least have to wait until mid–September to track down the slippers. That's when the library plans to open an exhibit about the migration path of all the items.

I'm Liz Jones, KUOW News.

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