rubbish
Design
Sub-Zero Garbage Can Keeps Your Trash Nice and Frosty
8:40AM Adam Frucci | Organic garbage, like banana peels and coffee grounds, stink. Sitting in your garbage can all day at room temperature guarantees that your place will smell like a dump. Not if it’s frozen, however. More »
Home
12-year-old Builds Homeless Shelter Yurt from Trash
6:00PM Elaine Chow | 12-year-old Max Wallack submitted this amazing “Home Dome”—a homeless shelter made from plastic, wire, and packing peanuts—to a recent “Trash to Treasure” design contest. Based on a Mongolian yurt, it’s warm and includes a bed. More »
Home
All-In-One Recycling Centre Puts Everything in its Right Place
11:00AM Adrian Covert | For those out there who obsess about keeping the recycling separate from the normal trash, your chariot has arrived. More »
Design
Tri3 Trash Can Recycles Your Waste Stylishly
6:00PM Elaine Chow | The Tri3 trashcan stacks three cans together to make recycling even easier than normal. It’s also much neater, and more stylish, than my solution of throwing recyclables into a heap in the kitchen corner. More »
Gadgets
More Video Evidence of China’s E-Waste Problem
9:20AM Jason Chen | We’ve posted about China’s e-waste problem before; a problem that stems from other countries needing to offload their trash and China being more than receptive because of good money to be had from salvaging. But what we haven’t seen much of is video. 60 Minutes tried recently to capture it, but were attacked from Chinese residents that wanted to keep their lucrative e-waste mining business intact. VWag found this longer Current documentary from 2007 that has longer footage—and angry citizens. See for yourself where that old 386 PC you threw away is going. [Current via Valleywag] More »
Press
60 Minutes Reporter Investigates China’s E-Waste Pits, Gets Attacked
3:25PM Gizmodo US Edition | 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley went to Guiyi, China to document the lives of Chinese e-waste workers there. He was able to get footage of what these pits, which process much of the toxic electronic scrap we in the West throw away, look like–despite being jumped by angry e-waste lot owners and nearly having his camera confiscated. More »
Gadgets
12:24PM Nick Broughall | When it comes to consumer technology, Australia is generally months behind the rest of the world. When a new gadget arrives here in Australia, the rest of the world has generally forgotten all about it.
Well, according to News.com.au, there’s now another technology we’re behind the rest of the world in: dealing with e-waste. Apparently we are “coming last” when it comes to recycling and reusing our old technology, and the government’s dragging its heels when it comes to coming up with any meaningful legislation to improve the situation.
Most disappointing though is that most of the western world still believes that dealing with e-waste is as simple as shipping old mobile phones and CRT TVs to third world countries – places like Delhi and Nigeria – so they can disassemble them. The problem is that they have no means for protection against all the toxic substances inside our gadgets, and when these substances are released, they generally end up poisoning someone or something.
Hit the link for the full article – it’s a cause for great concern for any real gadget fan in Australia.
[News.com.au]
More »
Australia Has No Strategy To Deal With E-Waste
12:24PM Nick Broughall | When it comes to consumer technology, Australia is generally months behind the rest of the world. When a new gadget arrives here in Australia, the rest of the world has generally forgotten all about it.
Well, according to News.com.au, there’s now another technology we’re behind the rest of the world in: dealing with e-waste. Apparently we are “coming last” when it comes to recycling and reusing our old technology, and the government’s dragging its heels when it comes to coming up with any meaningful legislation to improve the situation.
Most disappointing though is that most of the western world still believes that dealing with e-waste is as simple as shipping old mobile phones and CRT TVs to third world countries – places like Delhi and Nigeria – so they can disassemble them. The problem is that they have no means for protection against all the toxic substances inside our gadgets, and when these substances are released, they generally end up poisoning someone or something.
Hit the link for the full article – it’s a cause for great concern for any real gadget fan in Australia.
[News.com.au]
More »
Cameras
$20,000 Spy Camera Disguised as Garbage Thrown Out With The Trash
8:40AM Sean Fallon | A spy camera hidden in a black back beside a notorious UK “fly-tipping” (or illegal waste dumping in the King’s English) hot spot was recently thrown out by local workers with the other garbage. Apparently, this operation was so top secret that the workers in question did not need to know the details before being sent off to pick up the trash. To make matters worse, the camera has been valued at somewhere between US$14 and US$20,000. Basically, its just a hilarious waste of taxpayer money illustrated using equally hilarious British terminology. [Telegraph via Digg] More »
Gadgets
2:36PM Nick Broughall | Residents in NSW’s Randwick Council received a lovely gift recently – fancy new bins for their rubbish and recycling. 78,000 of them, in fact.
No it wasn’t a misguided attempt to swing votes by lavishing gifts on the electorate. It was a way of introducing RFID tags onto the bins so that the council and their waste management contractor could spy monitor the amount of rubbish and recycling being done throughout the area.
More »
What Rubbish: Councils Monitor Your Trash With RFID
2:36PM Nick Broughall | Residents in NSW’s Randwick Council received a lovely gift recently – fancy new bins for their rubbish and recycling. 78,000 of them, in fact.
No it wasn’t a misguided attempt to swing votes by lavishing gifts on the electorate. It was a way of introducing RFID tags onto the bins so that the council and their waste management contractor could spy monitor the amount of rubbish and recycling being done throughout the area.
More »
Science
