Here's your chance not just to be the mayor, but the original city planner as well! Imagine a medium sized city that would be developed with modern, low carbon transportation in mind, and other strategies to reduce the average citizens' carbon footprints.
What would that city look like? Would that make you more likely to want to live there?
Sustainable City >
An Efficient Waste Disposal System
One problem of cities is waste disposal. People don’t know how to sort trash, bins overflow, and streets are littered on. I have discovered a solution that we can integrate into cities to make the system of waste disposal more efficient.
Last year, I went on a trip to southern California to visit colleges. At UC Santa Barbara, our tour guide showed us a unique part of their campus that I think will have an amazing benefit on cities. Engineering students at UCSB invented the “Big Belly Solar Powered Trash Compactors,” which are solar-powered, high-capacity waste-disposal cans with both a recycle and trash option. The trash compactors can store up to five times the capacity of an ordinary trash can due to the can’s ability to compact the waste inside the can. Where does the technology get the energy to do this? The sun! This natural source of energy is another environmental benefit that these cans can offer.
These cans are a big step in sustainability. Less collection trips are made by the waste collectors, resulting in an 80% reduction of fuel usage and emission. When the can is ready to be emptied, it sends a message to the collectors, who can also track the volume of the cans online. This is the sort efficiency we need in our urban waste disposal systems.
Currently, these Big Belly Trash Compactors are located these California locations: Santa Catalina, San Nicolas, Santa Cruz, and San Rafael. If you are interested in learning more about the trash compactors, you can visit http://bigbelly.com/.
Tori,
I am so glad you shared the “Big Belly Solar Powered Trash Compactors” with us—this is some very exciting and innovative thinking! Waste generation and disposal is one of the biggest issues in American society today. In fact, the United States ranks in the top five producers of municipal solid waste in the developed world with the average person generating 4.4 pounds of waste per day, according to a 2013 report by EPA. Then there are also the environmental issues with the ways in which we dispose of our waste. For instance, potentially harmful gases emanate from landfills and leachate found in landfills can contaminate underlying and adjacent bodies of water while waste. It is imperative that we tackle these issues, and advancing waste-reduction technologies like Big Belly will really help, in my opinion.