Trash collection from public bins can be a problem if the cans on the garbage truck routes have nothing in them. Time, manpower and energy are all wasted. But how do you efficiently collect the waste if you don’t know which cans to collect from? Using the Enevo One would be a good start.

Invented and actually used in Finland, the Enevo One smart garbage can sensor knows when a bin needs emptied. It’s a small disc-shaped sensor that adheres to the bottom of the municipal trash cans and can sense when the bins are full. The collection company is then alerted and the appropriate adjustments are made to the truck routes.

The Enevo One’s “smart” qualities are its most impressive. It can not only sense the garbage, but it collects and analyses data on when a bin is expected to be full, how long it might take to fill the bin and other waste probability data. Now hopefully the rest of the world will catch on.

The post Smart Trash Bin Sensors Ask to Be Emptied When Full first appeared on Gajitz.

Polyurethane, that ubiquitous artificial material out of which just about everything seems to be made these days, is super-cheap and durable enough that it’s absolutely everywhere. But it isn’t recyclable or biodegradable, meaning that the broken toy you throw out today will remain in the landfill forever and ever. This, obviously, is a huge problem for people who don’t enjoy living in a planet-sized trash heap full of lawn furniture and water guns.

Enter Pestalotiopsis microspora, a mushroom found growing in the Ecuadorian rain forest (not the one pictured above) by a group of Yale students. The fungus can survive on a steady diet of nothing but polyurethane, the only organism known to do so. What’s even more exciting is that it can do this in an anaerobic (air-free) setting, such as the environment found at the bottom of a garbage dump. Maybe future generations won’t have to figure out what to do with all of our plastic waste, after all.

The post Plastic-Eating Mushrooms Could Clear up Persistent Garbage first appeared on Gajitz.

Adorable robots are a big weakness of ours, and adorable useful robots? We’re instantly smitten. Well, this could be love. As part of the three-year, $3.9 million DustBot research program, this helpful trash-eating robot prototype rolled through the streets of Peccioli, Italy this summer, chomping trash and recyclables. Sort of like a real-life Wall-E, the bot gathers rubbish and sorts it into recyclable, organic (hopefully to be composted), and waste. Then it whisks it off to a waste management facility, finding its way using pre-loaded maps and sensors to avoid obstacles.

It’s not just a flight of fancy that put this little guy on the streets. Trash robots are being seriously considered as a viable alternative to huge, inefficient garbage trucks that often can’t fit down narrow Italian streets. They would save energy and pollution, while hopefully helping to cut down on littering. The bots could be called to action with a citizen’s cell phone, as well as going door-to-door and identifying “customers” with a unique PIN. The DustCart is still a while from actually going to work on the crowded streets, but looking at urban waste management solutions like this one is a huge step forward for cities all around the world.

The post Wall-E in Real Life: Euro-Trashbot Cleans up Italian Streets first appeared on Gajitz.