New York Times, December 17, 2009

The current system of curbside recycling hasn't kept pace with today's stream of high-tech garbage, which increasingly includes hardware that could be salvaged (like cellphone parts) and products that contain toxic materials that could be more safely disposed of (like some fluorescent light bulbs). But now, a prototype technology called Smart Trash aims to better manage all forms of waste that carry product ID tags. "The whole information system falls off when things are disposed," says Valerie Thomas, a professor of industrial engineering and public policy at Georgia Tech. She is developing the Smart Trash system to fix that.

See "Waste Tracking" at: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/#technology-15