trash

Trash becomes invisible to most people as soon as they haul their trashcans out to the curb. Now MIT wants to change that by using tiny smart tags that will broadcast the location of 3,000 pieces of rubbish as they travel through the urban ecosystem and beyond.

Along with satellites and space stations, Earth is surrounded by tens of millions of pieces of floating space debris. Like any landfill, the trash is diverse, ranging from dead satellites to castaway rocket parts to flecks of paint. On average, over the past 40 years, one piece of space junk has fallen to Earth every day.

In the current climate of rising gas and food prices, it should stand to reason that people would find ways to change their most wasteful habits. According to new research from the UK, we need look no further than our own refrigerators. Fully 18 percent of all food purchased for household use in England and Wales is thrown away. The number is even higher for families with children at 27 percent. A now four year-old study of similar measure in the U.S. puts the American number around 14 percent, with nearly half of all food readied for harvest never making it to a dinner table.

There is a scene in Dances with Wolves after Costner's character has arrived at the deserted Dakota base in which he discovers the company's garbage pile. He gives it a disappointing, scrutinizing look as he recognizes it's another harbinger of what is to come for the plains and its people. Fast forward 150 years to a different kind of frontier: space, in near-Earth orbit. There, we find a similar garbage pile, only this one is traveling at 30,000 miles per hour and threatens all the satellites and telescopes and space stations floating about.

Last fall we reported on the growing mess of garbage swirling in the North Pacific Gyre. Its a swath of ocean arguably the size of the continental U.S. where all the plastic refuse from Asia and the western coast of North America ends up when its washed out to sea. Turtles mistake bags for jellyfish and birds mistake floating chips for prey. Animals have been discovered starved to death because the entire contents of their stomachs were plastic fragments. Sail a boat out to the middle of the gyre and the problem is in plain sight. Unfortunately for us, the more severe problem is the one we cant see.

It sounds as if someone just dropped a tricycle into a meat grinder. Im sitting inside a narrow conference room at a research facility in Bristol, Connecticut, chatting with Joseph Longo, the founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation. As we munch on takeout Subway sandwiches, a plate-glass window is the only thing separating us from the adjacent lab, which contains a glowing caldera of plasma three times as hot as the surface of the sun.