trash on technabob...

Co-funded by the European Commission, the $3.9 million (USD) Dustbot project aims to build a moderately-sized robot to navigate the narrow streets that garbage trucks can’t reach. Hey that rhymed! Nice. Anyway the pictures below were taken from Dustbot’s trial run in Peccioli, Italy.

Aside from collecting garbage, the Dustbot can also analyze the quality…

These most excellent bookends are the perfect addition to any Star Wars geek’s bookshelf.

Inspired by the famous garbage compactor scene from Episode IV: A New Hope, these limited-edition hand-painted bookends flip that classic movie moment inside-out. You’ll notice that instead of keeping the walls from closing in on them, Han, Luke, Chewbacca and Leia are…

And some people think junk is just, well, junk. But to the more visionary among us, that junk could be anything. Anything. Even a Tesla coil, if you’re innovative enough.

This DIY Tesla coil was built entirely from items found in the garbage. The project was conceived partially to prove just how many useful items…

Here in Chicago, we just got started with a city-sponsored neighborhood recycling program. While they’ll collect and re-purpose much of your post-consumer waste, electronics aren’t on the pick-up list. But if you’re a gadget addict like me, you probably go through batteries like they’re going out of style. So while I can’t recycle my discarded…

Talk about making something from nothing: a sewage plant in Japan’s Nagano prefecture recently began mining gold from wastewater. The sewage plant is located in the town of Suwa, where there are “numerous precision machining companies, metal plating facilities and hot springs”, which account for the relatively high concentration of gold in the wastewater that…

I love my PS3, and I love a good game of Tetris, but unlike Oscar the Grouch, I don’t know if I can say that I love trash. Still, this offbeat new game in the works combines all three into a single, juicy delicious morsel of gaming that could be the most addictive garbage collection…