waste

The conveyor belt of new mobile phone releases has created a stream of revenue for eRecyclingCorps.

The Irving, Texas-based startup today raised $35 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to expand its phone buyback services.

eRecyclingCorps, which is now used by at 3,000 Sprint and 500 Verizon outlets, lets consumers check the value of a phone they no longer want from a Web site and get a credit while in the store. A consumer can also use the application from home and mail the phone for a credit, although the company considers an instant rebate more appealing to … Read more

Rather than recycling plastic, startup Agilyx can bring plastic back to its original source: oil.

The Beaverton, Ore., company yesterday raised $25 million in a series C round of funding, which was led by Keating Capital and joined by existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Waste Management, an affiliate of oil company Total, and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.

The company, which raised $22 million in March this year, will use the money to develop four plastic-to-oil plants expected to go online in the first half of next year, according to CEO Chris Ulum. Agilyx is now operating its first … Read more

HAVERHILL, Mass.--There's a good amount of energy tied up in people's trash cans. But does it make sense to burn it?

I took a tour of Covanta Energy's waste-to-energy site here yesterday to delve a little deeper into that question. I learned that modern plants like this one are far less polluting than they used to be and that "reduce, reuse, recycle" is clearly the preferred route. For what's left over after recyling, though, waste-to-energy plants can fill a role as an alternative to landfills, assuming air quality standards remain in force.

This … Read more

Columbia University researchers assert that tech breakthroughs in recent years now make sending trash to landfills a waste of energy.

While recycling and energy recovery from plastics is on the rise, about 86 percent of used plastics are still sent to landfills. It's a big waste considering its energy potential, according to the 33-page report, "Energy and Economic Value of Non-recycled Plastics and Municipal Solid Wastes that are Currently Landfilled in Fifty States" (PDF).

About 28.8 million tons of non-recycled plastics were sent to landfills in 2008, the energy potential equivalent of 36.7 million tons … Read more

Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Wednesday announced his office is dispersing an additional $336.2 million in funds toward the massive U.S. high-speed rail public works project underway.

This time, the money is going for the trains themselves.

Including this latest release, $782 million has been dispersed for purchasing 33 locomotives and 120 bi-level train cars for California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington.

The federal government has now allocated a total of $10.1 billion, set aside via the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, for the introduction of high-speed rail as well as updates … Read more

Check out these keycap sculptures made by South African visual artist and cultural activist Maurice Mbikayi. Trained in graphic design and visual communication at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in France, Mbikayi's unique mixed-media collages and the keycap skulls represent the artist's thoughts on the impact of technology on Africa and the Earth's dependence on natural resources.

Mbikayi sourced the keycaps from piles of discarded technological remnants left around the streets of South Africa and are used in his works to question their original destination and intent.

Click through the break for more pictures of Maurice Mbikayi's works of art.… Read more

There is an afterlife--for electronics, anyway. Ever wonder what it's like? Researchers at MIT tracked used computers to find out. The project gives you a glimpse of where cast-off laptops and smartphones end up.

Rather than simply providing statistics about the global flows of secondhand electronics and e-waste, the MIT Senseable City Lab researchers produced a series of images of the gadgets' new owners and their surroundings. The images hail from Indonesia, South Asia, and Africa.

For the project, dubbed Backtalk, researchers sent refurbished Netbooks to developing countries via nonprofit organizations. They set up the computers to record location and pictures, and send the data home to MIT--with their new owners' consent. The Netbooks carried stickers explaining the project in the local language.

The researchers captured the data using the open-source antitheft software Prey, which records a computer's GPS coordinates and takes a picture with the computer's camera every 20 minutes.… Read more

The U.S. government is aiming to pull the plug on hundreds of unneeded data centers over the next few years in an attempt to save taxpayers some hard-earned cash.

In a blog published yesterday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget admitted that instead of consolidating data centers as many businesses have done in recent years, the government went in the opposite direction. Between 1998 and 2010, federal agencies actually quadrupled their number of data centers despite increases in the efficiency of data storage.

And, of course, taxpayers have been stuck paying the bills for those data … Read more

Paper Toss is an extremely simple but still fairly addictive game that simulates the time-honored office pastime of tossing crumpled pieces of paper into a trash can. In the game's interface, you hold your Android mobile device vertically as you flick a wad of paper toward the target can, attempting to account for a blowing fan when you calculate your trajectory. The fan changes sides and speed for each shot, and Paper Toss features three levels of difficulty, with the trash can at varying distances.

Where this game really shines, though, is in its production values: the crisp visuals, … Read more