The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/trash/)
Imagine this. You’ve just had a delicious breakfast at Morrison. You filled your plate high with steaming pancakes and berries, tater tots, and a couple of hard-boiled protein-packed eggs. You even went back to the dessert bar for a waffle, but ended up only eating half. Now, you’re walking to the dish drop with your fork, a couple of dirty napkins, crumbled egg shells and that oddly enticing half-waffle.
Robots may be the solution to New York City’s trash problem. In fact, Cornell Tech Ph.D. candidate Frank Bu and his team engineered trash barrel robots — human controlled trash cans that pick up garbage — in New York City this summer in order to study how people interact with robots in public spaces and how this can be used to encourage trash pick up.
He first worked on this project 11 years ago with his faculty advisor at Stanford University where he engineered a trash can on a rumba. After noticing a dire need for trash pickup in the city, Bu and his team contacted Village Alliance, a leading advocate for the Greenwich Village community, in Astor Place, NYC to launch this machine in a public space.
It’s no secret that NYC has a waste problem. Streets can often be seen lined with trash bags full to the brim. According to the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, the metropolitan region produces 14 million tons every year, much of which lands in landfills or incinerators, or pollutes sidewalks and waterways.
I am a freshman in the School of Engineering and an international student. This last detail is important because from Aug. 17 to Aug. 31, I had to quarantine in my room, eating only the boxed meals provided by Cornell Dining. During, and well after my time in mandated quarantine, widespread complaints about two issues circulated: The overuse of single-use plastics and inadequate waste disposal.
Out of the many emails received by Cornellians each day, residents of Cascadilla Hall were likely not expecting the one that arrived in their inboxes on Thursday: several large bottles of urine had been discovered in the trash, prompting a stern warning from housing staff.
Freshman year is about more than just picking the right classes and meeting new friends.