garbagescout blog

This CD case made from used circuit boards is innovative recycling at its best.

This plastic CD case, like any other but with bits of circuit boards glued on it for decoration, requires a good deal of energy to produce and will be mailed to you in a large cardboard box! Only £10.00! That’s £2 per CD it holds.

Swedes push for more incineration (kind of an old article but fuck it):

“In remote areas, for example, it would not be viable to transport waste long distance for recycling. It would make more sense to burn it locally and use the process to generate electricity.”

Greenpeace disagrees:

“It’s a nonsense to say incineration could ever be better than recycling. That would be a regressive step.”

I like the “burn it locally” idea. I mean, really locally. How quckly would people develop alternative packaging and waste reuse and reduction schemes if the alternative was that they personally had to burn their own garbage?

My personal fatasies aside, this is a good conversation to have. Recycling is not the panacea some (though I don’t know who) might think it is. A bit of recyclable material still needs to be sorted, trucked, and processed. Will doing that use more energy than putting in the ground or burning it? Will more toxic chemicals be used to recycle a plastic bottle or a tire than to create a new one from raw materials? Does burning plastic bottles in an incinerator potentially generate enough energy to offset the pollution?

If you don’t want to have to think about these problems, the answer is source reduction. Tusly should our powers of cogitation be employed.

Frog Design employees are conducting an experiment where they will carry with them all trash that they create (or which, by buying, they have sanctioned the creation of) for a two-week period. Participants are allowed to recycle or compost.

It’s a good experiment, causing one partipant to muse about what it would be like if the cost of eventual disposal were borne by the consumer.

Imagine it costs $100 a pound to dispose of garbage. As a result when you purchase an item in a store, your decision making process now factors in the cost of disposal, of the product itself and/ or the packaging, before you purchase. We need a push/ accelerator/ catalyst to expedite the emergence of creative thinking & solutions to the garbage problem. Money will do that.

Municpal solid waste is a good case to use in discussing market liberalization. If govenment no longer collected waste, there’d be a lot less of it. At the same time, there would likely be a lot more burning of it, or dumping it in the ocean, or creating rotting piles of it in the street.

Now then…

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this site running. Basically, the posts are submitted via email, and the email addresses receive so much spam that the system is just not working. The posts I sent this week didn’t show up. I just deleted 6000 pieces of spam.

Crap. Time for a new project.

update 2007 September 14:
It’s back.

OK, I’m making the code for Garbagescout available for sale.

What you get:

• email parser - receives the email and puts its contents in the right places;
• geocoder - tries to translate street names into latitude and longitude;
• UI - the server-side code that generates the HTML you see;
• maps scripts - the javascript behind the Google Map

I’ll also help you out getting it all set up.

The code is licensed to you under the terms of the GPL. Be sure you understand the terms you’re agreeing to! The only further stipulation is that the site you create can’t be a site for scouting garbage in New York City. I know that’s vague, so I’m relying on your honesty.

The code itself is not the most beautiful stuff in the world, but it’s clear and commented. I basically banged this out in a month, and the code could be improved in several places.

The price is $300 for non-commercial use, which means you can not profit from the use or sale of the code I sell you, except spiritually. It’s $1000 if you’re going to use the code to make money, make it part of a for-profit web site, or try to sell it (hopefully after making some improvements). Again, here I rely on you to be honest. This code will only be useful to you if you are a programmer.

Feel free to contact me with questions. It’s jim eat garbagescout doubt com.

I just deleted 529 pieces of spam! If your comment was among the spam, please accept my apologies. You can email me at “jim” @ the name of this site.

Brett sends this link to a story about the strange things UK garbagemen have found. They seem to throw away a lot of money over there. Sure wish I’d found those human skulls.

You may have noticed, there are ads. You may also notice that they’re mostly for ringtones and online poker. In this way, they match the attempted comment spam on this wiki.

Is anyone against the ads?

Want to buy one? This site reaches thousands of cheapskates.

Via FoundClothing:

Trash

What we value, what we throw away

SUMMER GROUP SHOW

June 27th - July 27th, 2006

50 artists working with diverse materials and viewpoints collide for an exhibition addressing the full spectrum of TRASH.
From spiritual to material, junk bonds to junk food, spring cleaning to slum clearance, modern society holds irrational attitudes about plenty. America is a land of kitsch and collectables, consumers and accumulators—so it ‘be-Hoovers’ us to explore how we live with what we throw away and why we produce this mass of muck in the first place.

At the Atlantic Gallery.