Results from MIT's Trash Tracking Experiment

Back in July, researchers at MIT's SENSEable City lab launched an experiment: They'd tag thousands of pieces of trash in New York and Seattle with wireless transmitters and map their migrations so you could watch the peregrinations of that used paper cup through the city's waste removal system.

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Their idea was that this kind of tracking was the first step in exposing people to a product's "removal chain" and maybe even making 100 percent recycling a reality in the future.They're wrapping up the experiment now. The TrashTrack site has been updated with a few screen shots of the vizualizations they created.They've also announced some dates for upcoming live exhibitions in New York and Seattle that are likely to be pretty eye-opening. This is part of a product's life cycle that is otherwise all but invisible to us.