By Diana Jimenez

In July, MIT scientists from MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory placed mini-microchips on a piece of rubber and disposed of it like it was trash.  The piece of rubber traveled thru Seattle’s disposal system in an effort to track waste and determine where our trash really winds up.  Micro-tracking chips were also placed in a yogurt cup and a sheet of cardboard to track these items journey. 

The piece of rubber ended up where it was supposed to, in an incinerator, and the yogurt cup ended up in a recycling facility.  However, the sheet of cardboard’s whereabouts are unknown and its last signal was located in a South Boston parking lot.

These “smart tags” are extremely durable and can withstand being taken thru the daily journey of regular trash and thru this tracking system, the research team hopes this will get consumers to think more about where their trash ends up and possible make more conscious decisions when discarding their waste. 

The “smart tags” are projected to become much smaller and along with increasing the awareness of consumers of where their trash goes, the tracking system also hopes to monitor various cities disposal system and make improvements to make recycling and trash disposal much more effective.

Source: The Boston Globe

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