Group items tagged

This document reports on an LCA study of PCs, according to the terms of reference described in Technical Annex XI.E.4/96/0056 of the Commission's call for tenders and on pp 12-14 of Atlantic/IPU's tender for the project, which was distributed to the PC ad hoc working group on 21 January, 1997.

Regulations governing disposal of electronic waste can reduce the world's mountains of recycled devices, says Professor Erica Plambeck. She and her coauthor also find that by encouraging manufacturers to slow the rate of new product introductions, consumers are willing to pay more for devices now on the shelves.

Scientific American, 7/17/09, article by Larry Greenemeier. Most people assume that their trash ends up in a landfill somewhere far away (if they think about this at all). But growing concern over the environmental impact of waste-discarded electronics, in particular-has prompted a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to take a high-tech approach to studying exactly what people are tossing out and where those items are ending up. The researchers, part of MIT's Senseable City Lab, have developed electronic tags that they're hoping as many as 3,000 volunteers in Seattle and New York City will affix to different items they throw away this summer as part of the Trash Track program. These tags will contact cell phone towers they pass as they flow through the trash stream to their final destinations, helping the researchers monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal.

Trash Track relies on the development of smart tags, which will be attached to different types of garbage in order to track in real time each piece of waste as it traverses the city's sanitation system. The goal of the project is to reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects and waste, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today's recycling and sanitation systems. The project will be exhibited at the Architectural League in New York City and in Seattle starting September 2009. MIT SENSEable City Lab project; this is the project web site.

7/15/09. Article on Trash Track, a project of the MIT SENSEable City lab that uses microprocessors to track the movement of various types of waste through an urban waste stream for the analysis of patterns and assessment of disposal costs. Seattle, WA and NYC are pilot projects in the U.S.; tracking will also occur in London, England in the U.K.

From Environmental Leader, 7/6/09. Highlights of IBM's 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report. Includes link to PDF of the report.