Not necessarily although a federal standard would help. A single big state like California could implement it and the standard would propagate itself from there.
6 karma · joined September 17, 2017
Of course there are corner cases to be handled. But what percentage of the trash is Vietnamese cookie box and Japanese candy wrappers? In these cases, the person uses their best judgment.
It needs to be dead simple: number of labels = number of bins available. Maybe number of labels can be more than number of bins by 1 or 2 at most.
Secondly, use numbering instead of icons. Numbering is dead simple to match, icons require effort to match on the box against the picture on bin.
In the case of saran wrap: the box should clearly say #2 for box and #3 for contents (saran wrap). That would resolve the case you mentioned.
The person then simply matches number on article to the number on bin and throws, dead simple.
See my comment above for detailed description of this.
This system could be adaptable as well. So suppose, you have only 2 bins, say bins: #1 and #2. The article to be thrown is marked as #3. So, in the absence of the relevant bin, throw the article to the closest matching bin, in this case: #2. The system would be composed of simple rules that people can remember in obvious fashion.
> You also open the system up to folklore about what the numbers mean and what should go in each bin. And that folklore is impossible to control and correct.
I don't know what "folklore" means here. This efficiency of the system comes from standardization. It seems no different than rules at a traffic light intersection. One could argue that color of traffic lights could open up the system to folklore then?
1. Person walks up with trash in hand to 3 bins. Each bin has a poster with pictures of items which are meant for that bin. Each person has to make O(n) comparisons for each of the bin and then make the closest judgment call. Too exhausting, error prone and inefficient as each person is solving the classification problem for a given trash item over and over again.
Here's a simple solution to the problem above:
1. Setup a regulation that each article be simply labelled with a numeral marking: "1", "2" or "3". Standardize each trash bin to be called bin #1, #2 or #3. Each person simply throws the trash in the matching bin.
This moves the classification problem from the person to the time of manufacturing of the article. Also, the classification is only done once by experts and not by each person at the time of throwing away the article. Also, reduces the classification problem for the person from O(n) to O(1).
Simple solution which solves the problem in elegant fashion.