Following this year’s Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 7, CBS will premiere a new program called “Undercover Boss.” According to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), the new reality show follows corporate executives who anonymously take entry-level positions with their own companies, ostensibly to see how the other half lives. Hilarity and carefully edited personal growth no doubt ensue.

What makes “Undercover Boss” pertinent to this blog, however, is that the post-Super Bowl premiere features Waste Management president and COO Larry O’Donnell mixing with the hoi polloi. The show will follow Anderson “as he cleans porta-potties and works at a recycling plant,” says THR.

Residents of Ghent, Belgium use an advanced radio-tag- (RFID) based pay-as-you-throw data collection system that purports to measure the city’s waste stream down to the pound. According to a post on Greenopolis, trash and organic waste carts fitted with special RFID tags, or “IntelliGhent” chips, make it possible to track each emptying of the bins. A device on collection vehicles reads customer data (name, address, type and size of container) on the chips. That information is then used to generate automatic bills each day. Recyclables go in blue plastic bags printed with specific instructions as to what is and isn’t accepted for recycling.

These and several other forward-thinking moves have helped the city’s diversion rate to skyrocket since 1995. That accomplishment is undercut somewhat by the revelation that the system has had a negligible effect on or possibly increased greenhouse gas emissions.

A recent piece in the New York Times details New York City’s pursuit of hybrid garbage trucks. The New York Sanitation Department (DSNY) is currently testing four different models provided by Mack and Crane Carrier. The city will take a year to decide which model it likes best, then purchase 300 trucks per year. According to the article, the large purchase could help lower the cost of heavy-duty hybrids.

The article predicts that 4,850 medium- and heavy-duty hybrid trucks will be on the road by next year, compared to 200 in 2006.

Is your firm or municipality considering the purchase of hybrid vehicles in the near future?

The whiz-bang idea of a plasma-powered rocket is undercut somewhat when said rocket is relegated to collecting space garbage, but that is one of the many menial tasks Costa Rican-born physicist Franklin Chang Diaz envisions for his invention. The variable specific impulse magnetoplasmic rocket (VASIMR) is propelled by superheated exhaust gas and can move a craft much faster than current rocket technology at roughly half the cost. Chang Diaz, a former NASA astronaut now serving as president and CEO of the Ad Astra Rocket Company, says VASIMR may one day ferry astronauts to Mars and beyond. But for the time being, the craft could take on humbler jobs, such as keeping space stations aloft, ferrying payloads into orbit and, yes, collecting dead satellites and other potentially dangerous trash orbiting the planet.

“Our goal is to be able to have a garbage truck that will be picking up all of these objects at various orbits, obviously for a price,” Chang Diaz told GlobalPost. The trash could be dumped in an “orbital graveyard,” he added, “or we could actually launch them to the sun and drive them to the sun, which is kind of the ultimate, cosmic dump.”

Which sounds like a great metaphor until you realize that no one really worries about their local landfill going supernova.

Source: GlobalPost

So you redecorated the entire house, from the Asian-inspired living room to the country French kitchen. But something’s still not right. Why, it’s the garbage can liner, of course! You barely ever see it, but just knowing that that sad white plastic bag with the yellow ties fails to conform to your overall aesthetic just gnaws at you.

Fret not! Obsessives can now swath their trash in style thanks to Elaine Murray of Park City, Utah, inventor of decorated garbage liners sold under the name Sweet Baguettes. The liners currently come in three designs: a contemporary blue and brown pattern and two patterns suitable for a child’s trash can, cars and trucks and fairy princesses. More designs are planned as the product receives wider distribution. The four-gallon bags come in packs of 15, tastefully wrapped in baguette paper.

Therapy costs extra.

Source: The Park Record