thanks to Inhabitat.com
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how much I love new ideas for making recycling more fun and more effective. While the recycling lottery is still my favorite right now, I’ve recently come across something quite promising (though perhaps not very cost effective at the moment).
The DustBot has been designed to ride around the streets of the Italian town of Peccioli picking up trash and sorting it into waste, recycling and compost. Although in its infancy, this little Bot works well, but isn’t old enough to roam on its own unmonitored. Eventually, the goal is to set these robots free in the city. Then customers will be able to summon these electronic garbage cans with a cell phone call: the Bots will make house calls!
Thse DustBots even have monitoring systems within their programming that measure the amount of pollutants in the air like sulfur oxides, benzene, ozone, and nitrogen oxides.
So far, this has been part of a $3.9 million project to clean up the city, but if technicians can get the cost down considerably, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this little guy in your home town soon.
