Ever wonder what happens to your trash?

In August 2009, a team of researchers from the SENSEable City Lab in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning embarked on a major project to track the journey of 3,000 items of waste as they moved through Seattle’s disposal system.  The goal of the project, called Trash Track, was to monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal and to help create awareness of the impact of trash on the environment.

The results are both amazing and staggering to see and contemplate.  Watch this 2-minute video to see how an ink cartridge and cell phone discarded in Seattle, for example, end up in Mexico and south Florida:

For more about Trash Track, which won an international award for visualization, start here.

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  Please also visit NRDC’s sustainable communities video channel.