Wastemonitor Concept and Philosophy
The concept was born out of frustration, a feeling I got every time I was landing on illegal waste dumps in the middle of nowhere and actually wondering how people got there and why they would go so far in nature to dump their stuff. Most of time due to the volume and size of the dumps I was left having to close my eyes and move on being very conscious that no one would ever find it to clean it up.
So one day having seen too much I decided that instead of being just a frustrated observer I would start reporting and archiving every spot I find. But in order to report I would need a simple way to get extremely precise coordinates in order to associate imagery, description with precise location. So I decided to look for a simple GPS, I bought a Geko 201 from Garmin
Gekos are the smallest and lightest waterproof GPS units on the market - inexpensive, with sleek designs and simple operating systems.
If you are interested in purchasing a GPS unit but don't know where just contact me and I'll direct you to the right shop.
The idea is not to point the finger at people saying you are not doing your jobs properly but to gather enough data to disallow any excuses when it comes to actually cleaning up. Furthermore it is very important to have approximate information on toxicity of every site in order to set priorities.
The site www.wastemonitor.org facilitates the uploading of gathered data. Participants are able to create a new report entering the satellite data along with supporting digital imagery of the waste, multiple check boxes enable users to classify the nature of the waste. The waste classification available on the site is a simplified version of the European waste classification catalog.
People behind the project
Members
Michael Schleifer
Lina Jarl
Stephen Nugent
Julie Schleifer
Supporters
Katerina Nikolaidou Pietroni
Joanna McCarthy
Robert Schleifer
Adrian Cleave
Justin Pietroni
Alex Schleifer
William Schleifer
Vanja Arsenov
Helmut Schleifer
Madeleine Schleifer