I think this is so cool. MIT is conducting a research project which involves inserting “smart” chips into objects that become trash, which are then tracked in order to learn where all our trash goes. As they state on their Trash Track website:

“Imagine a future where immense amounts of trash didn’t pile up on theperipheries of our cities: a future where we understand the’removal-chain’ as we do the ‘supply-chain’, and where we can use thisknowledge to not only build more efficient and sustainableinfrastructures but to promote behavioral change. In this future city,the invisible infrastructures of trash removal will become visible andthe final journey of our trash will no longer be ‘out of sight, out ofmind’.”