The Ugly Indian: Ordinary people trying to clean up India's streets, starting with the city of Bangalore. Associated Facebook page. BBC coverage of the initiative.
posted by peacheater on Dec 13, 2011 - 6 comments

"One of the categories of garbage has its own word in New York City, but it’s a category found everywhere that there is trash. There are things people will put out for discard: they’re done with it, they don’t want to see it again. Somebody else looks at that same object and says, “Whoa, wait a minute. That’s pretty nice. I want to keep that.” Those two chairs you’re sitting in were on the curb to be thrown out. They’re pretty nice chairs. I’m happy to have them. In New York, that’s called mongo. It’s a noun and a verb: those are mongo. People who take things from the trash to keep are mongoing. " [more inside]
posted by liketitanic on Nov 3, 2010 - 87 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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