Your cafefully separated recycling heads to the dump. Reporters in D.C. follow some of the trucks around town and watch them dump the trash and the recycling together into the same truck. (previously)
posted by caddis on Nov 9, 2009 - 67 comments

Discovered in 1997 by oceanographer Charles Moore, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 3.5 million tons of trash, 80% of which is plastic. Moore is the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which is conducting ongoing research into the patch. Blog from their current expedition on the research vessel Alguita. The Scripp's Institution of Oceanography is also studying the patch. Blog from their SEAPLEX expedition. greatgarbagepatch.org tracks community efforts to stop trashing the ocean. Previously: [1, 2].
posted by kanuck on Aug 4, 2009 - 17 comments

Australian town bans bottled water.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Jul 18, 2009 - 59 comments

How the Moon Became a Trash Can. [more inside]
posted by gman on May 14, 2009 - 65 comments

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a search of your trash doesn't violate your privacy. This decision is in line with that of the United States. [more inside]
posted by Lemurrhea on Apr 9, 2009 - 80 comments

Flaming Garbage Cans In Hip Hop Videos. Pretty self-explanatory; a blog that tracks the use of the flaming garbage can in hip hop music videos.
posted by Demogorgon on Apr 5, 2009 - 19 comments

Hello Hello Finally a myspace blog post worth seeing: funny window messages about neighbors with trash disposal concerns, vaguely reminiscent of the window messages in "You and Me and Everyone Else We Know" [more inside]
posted by srs on Jul 13, 2008 - 15 comments

Federal and state government officials and border activists say the garbage dumped in the Sonoran Desert by illegal immigrants and their smugglers is staggering. The cleanup is costing taxpayers millions. The Southern Arizona Project(pdf) is a multi-year program setup by the Bureau of Land Management to mitigate the impacts to the ecology by illegal immigration and smuggling. In 2006 alone, more than 1.18 million pounds of trash was collected along the southern Arizona border.
posted by netbros on May 7, 2008 - 22 comments

This guy saved all his trash for an entire year. It amounted to 96 cubic feet. Perhaps not surprisingly, his message is conservation.
posted by desjardins on Dec 31, 2007 - 22 comments

The Garbage Game. What would you do with 64,000 tons of garbage every week? The Gotham Gazette is a not-for-profit newspaper that reports on New York City politics and policy. On their site is a highly informative game that puts you in the place of a resident and then the Sanitation Commissioner, shedding some light on NYC's garbage problem.
posted by brooklynexperiment on Nov 14, 2007 - 14 comments

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation's video Synthetic Sea is pretty shocking. "All we can do is stop polluting and hope the system will clean itself up in hundreds of years." So, what will be the fate of the plastic bag until the inevitable ban comes? Should they be Taxed? Should they be Banned ? Should stores charge extra for them? We don't really have a lot of time to argue about it.
posted by chuckdarwin on Jun 27, 2007 - 36 comments

The Daily Dump [video] is an open source design for a terracotta home composting unit that aims to provide manifold benefits - for potters, for homemakers, and also for civil society, particularly in a country where waste removal isn't as regular or reliable a service. How to's here.
posted by infini on May 15, 2007 - 18 comments

Garbage In/Gold Out Which is more important: recycling or the garbage collector's bottom line? Some Oregon cities are backing up the garbage collectors over recyclers. Too bad. First time I've ever seen a dumpster diving company who has a web page with testimonials from police officers.
posted by leftcoastbob on Oct 27, 2006 - 24 comments

Garbage of New York City - litter that is collected, packaged up in a neat plastic box, and then sold for $50 a pop.
posted by Orange Goblin on Sep 18, 2006 - 37 comments

Garbage Day! I don't know where this is from or what it means. But I can't stop watching it.
posted by indiebass on Apr 5, 2006 - 40 comments

GarbageScout. An interactive online map for locating and posting free stuff that's lying around your neighborhood.
posted by stbalbach on Feb 4, 2006 - 22 comments

Dumpster World - "Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource." [via Information Nation, which also links to that story of a woman who was recently unloaded into a garbage truck]
posted by mediareport on Jun 27, 2005 - 19 comments

The Garbage House is a bizarre but all-too-common phenomenon. Garbage houses often seem to be a product of a particular type of obsessive-compulsive disorder called compulsive hoarding. The hoarding [wmv, direct] may be of garbage, animals, (the neighborhood "cat lady") or perhaps even "collectibles" from eBay. The most compulsive hoarders seem to be the Collyer Brothers[*], even prompting a book.
posted by afiler on Apr 7, 2005 - 29 comments

Recycling ... Is Garbage. John Tierney looks at the reality of recycling and concludes it is largely a wasted effort.
Appeared in the NY Times in June, 1996.
posted by knave on Feb 16, 2005 - 41 comments

The man with a garbage can.
posted by limitedpie on Nov 6, 2004 - 7 comments

Mongo is the treasures people discover in garbage, and Ted Botha has written an excellent book about it and talked about it. If your curiousity is peaked, you might want to try it yourself.
posted by drezdn on Aug 14, 2004 - 11 comments

First it was turkey parts, then pig waste and now straw added to the camels back. Thermochemical and biochemical conversion make use of natural processes such as enzymes, heat and pressure to create oil from garbage so one day landfills may become the new domestic oil fields.
posted by stbalbach on Apr 23, 2004 - 5 comments

TRASHLOG — or — arresting and acute observation of ordinary offal.
posted by pedantic on Jan 23, 2004 - 5 comments

Trashtalking - German Style. Forget talking dolls, Berlin's speechifying its trash cans to thank pedestrians after they dump their litter. But is it appropriate to have immaterial things tell you how to use them? [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 on Nov 23, 2003 - 15 comments

Freecycling. Reducing the amount of trash we generate by connecting people who have things that they no longer want with people who want those same things. The only rule: Every item posted must be free.
posted by grabbingsand on Nov 18, 2003 - 31 comments

Rubbish Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so this weekly newspaper grabbed theirs. Informative and adventurous story results.
posted by sparky on Dec 30, 2002 - 22 comments

Cleaner dumps £5k art -- Mistook rubbish for... well, rubbish.
posted by frednorman on Oct 19, 2001 - 11 comments

Why does this sound like a bad idea? Average person = dumber than garbage. Average crocodile = smarter than garbage. warning. does not compute.
posted by jcterminal on Sep 5, 2001 - 8 comments

Did you hear about the Trash Bloc? Some anti-authoritarians are planning a bloc for the weekend of the IMF/World Bank protests that would go around Washington DC neighborhoods and pick up trash. I think we can all get down with that.
posted by sudama on Aug 20, 2001 - 4 comments