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When you have all these traces of trash moving around, you can ask yourself how can we make the system more efficient. Then we can make better decisions. And perhaps we will not throw away the plastic bottles that go every day to the dump.

Some trash is recycled, some is thrown away, some ends up where it shouldn't end up.

The deployment of geolocating tags attached to ordinary garbage could paint a surprising picture of the waste management system, as trash is shipped throughout the country in a maze-like disposal process - as we saw in Seattle with our own Trash Track project.

We live in a disposable society. It's easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name - we call it recycling.

If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they'll be all over it.

What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant.

I don't talk trash often, but when I do, I go for the jugular.

Of all the waste we generate, plastic bags are perhaps the greatest symbol of our throwaway society. They are used, then forgotten, and they leave a terrible legacy.