Remember the banana peels, apple cores, and leftover pizza you recently threw in the garbage? Today, your food waste—and your neighbors’—is emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases as it decomposes in a nearby municipal landfill. Buried food scraps and yard waste at 51 dumps across Colorado generate an amount of methane equivalent to driving 1 million gasoline-powered cars for a year. About 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a period of 20 years, methane accounts for 11% of global emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere and contributing to more intense and severe weather, wildfires, and drought. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane pollution in Colorado, after agriculture and fossil fuel extraction. Draft methane rules released last month by the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment would, for the first time, require some dump operators to measure and quantify methane releases and to fix leaks. The proposal mandates that waste managers install a gas collection system if their dump generates a certain amount of the climate-warming gas.  It also addresses loopholes in federal law that allow waste to sit for five years before such systems are required—even though science has shown that half of all food waste decays within about three and a half years. The draft rule surpasses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards in the amount of landfill area operators must monitor for emissions. It’s set to be heard by the state’s Air Quality Control Commission in August. Proposed regulations require the elimination of open gas flares—burning emissions directly into the atmosphere—and urge the use of biocovers and biofilters, which rely on bacteria to break down gases. The 70-page draft also calls for more routine and thorough monitoring of a dump surface with advanced technologies like satellites, which recently recorded large plumes of methane escaping from a Denver-area landfill. “We’ve had our eyes opened thanks to technology that has made the invisible, visible—now we know the extent of the problem, which is much greater than what estimates have portrayed,” said Katherine Blauvelt, circular economy director at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to decarbonize industry.  “When landfill operators fail to control leaks, we know harmful pollutants are coming along for the ride.” Cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, such as benzene and toluene, escape with methane leaching from landfills. These chemicals also contribute to the formation of lung-damaging ozone pollution, an increasing problem for the 3.6 million people who live in the greater Denver metropolitan area. Indeed, the region along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains ranked sixth in the nation for the most polluted air—with unhealthy ozone levels reported on one out of every 10 days, on average, according to the American Lung Association’s 2025 “State of the Air” report. The state is also woefully behind in its compliance with federal air quality standards. State officials and environmental advocates agree that reducing methane emissions from landfills, which are easier to mitigate than cow burps, for example, is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to slow warming in the short term. “Waste deposited in landfills continues producing methane for decades as it breaks down—and it’s one sector where Colorado has yet to directly take action to reduce these greenhouse gases,” said Tim Taylor, a supervisor in the state’s air pollution control division, in an online hearing last February on the proposed landfill methane rules. Colorado’s draft regulations are similar to those in California, Oregon, Maryland, and Washington, he added. More than 10 landfills in the state are already required under federal rules to have gas collection and control systems. Yet even with such technology in place, disposal facilities routinely exceed federal methane emissions caps. The state’s health department has also identified a dozen municipal solid waste landfills, based on a preliminary analysis, that would be required to put such systems in place under the proposed rules, Zachary Aedo, an agency spokesman, said in an email to Capital & Main. Many of these facilities are operated by counties, some of which expressed concerns about their ability to pay for such systems. “We are a small rural county, and a multimillion-dollar containment system is going to be more than we can build,” testified Delta County Commissioner Craig Fuller at the February hearing. “The financial equation of this whole thing is absolutely mind-boggling—we are struggling as it is to provide health and human services.” Other county officials embraced the proposed tightening of rules. “Landfills across Colorado, including in Eagle County, are leading sources of methane pollution,” said Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr in a March 6 statement. “As a local elected official I support a robust rule that embraces advanced technologies to cut pollution, protect public health and help the methane mitigation industry thrive.” For larger landfill companies, like Waste Management, which operates 283 active disposal sites nationwide, figuring out which technology works to best monitor emissions from a dump’s surface is proving a complex challenge. The company is testing technologies at facilities with different topographies and climate fluctuations to understand what causes emissions releases, said Amy Banister, Waste Management senior director of air programs. “Landfills are complicated, emissions vary over time, and we have emissions 24/7,” said Banister at an online meeting last September of a technical group created by Colorado health department officials. “Drones produced a lot of false positives—and we need more work understanding how fixed sensors can be applied in a landfill environment.” State health officials suggested municipalities could offset the costs of installing gas collection systems at disposal sites by converting methane into energy. Several landfill operations in Colorado currently have such waste-to-energy systems—which send power they generate to the state’s power grid. “We are mindful of the costs of complying with this rule and how tipping fees may be impacted,” said Taylor, an air quality supervisor, at the February hearing. “Analyses conducted in other states of their landfill methane rules found there wasn’t an increase in tipping fees as a result of regulations over time.” Tipping fees are paid by those who dispose of waste in a landfill. If operators passed on compliance costs to households, a state analysis found, the yearly average annual fee would increase $22.90 per household. Colorado’s push comes as the EPA issued an enforcement alert in September that found “recurring Clean Air Act compliance issues” at municipal solid waste landfills that led to the “significant release of methane,” based on 100 inspections conducted over three years.  Such violations included improper design and installation of gas collection and control systems, failure to maintain adequate “cover integrity,” and improper monitoring of facilities for emissions. To address gaps in federal regulations, which require operators to measure emissions four times a year by walking in a grid pattern across the face of the landfill with a handheld sensor, Colorado’s draft rules require third-party monitoring. Such measurements must be conducted offsite by an entity approved by the state’s air pollution control division that uses a satellite, aircraft or mobile monitoring platform. The infrequency of such grid walks—which skip spots that operators deem dangerous—contributes to the undercounting of methane emissions from landfills, according to a satellite-based analysis. An international team of scientists estimated potent greenhouse gas emissions from landfills are 50% higher than EPA estimates. Satellites like one operated by nonprofit Carbon Mapper found large methane plumes outside the quarterly monitoring periods over the Tower Landfill in Commerce City, northeast of Denver. The satellite allowed scientists to see parts of the landfill not accessible with traditional monitoring—measurements that found that such landfills are underreporting their methane emissions to state regulators, said Tia Scarpelli, a research scientist and waste sector lead at Carbon Mapper. “Landfill emissions tend to be quite persistent—if a landfill is emitting when it’s first observed, it’s likely to be emitting later on,” she added. Scarpelli cautioned that it’s important for regulators to investigate with operators what was happening on the landfill surface at the time the leak was measured. Tower Landfill’s operator, Allied Waste Systems of Colorado, provided reasons for such large methane releases in a January 2024 report to the state’s health department, including equipment malfunctions. The fix for about 22 emissions events over the federal methane limits detected in August 2023 by surface monitoring: “Soil added as cover maintenance.” Like many dumps across Colorado and the nation, the Tower Landfill is located near a community that’s already disproportionately impacted by emissions from industrial activities. “These landfills are not only driving climate change, they are also driving a public health crisis in our community,” said Guadalupe Solis, director of environmental justice programs at Cultivando, a nonprofit led by Latina and Indigenous women in northern Denver. “The Tower Landfill is near nursing homes, clinics, near schools with majority Hispanic students.” Physicians in the state warned that those who live the closest to dumps suffer the worst health effects from pollutants like benzene and hydrogen sulfide, which are linked to cancer, heart, and other health conditions. “People living near landfills, like myself, my family and my patients, experience higher exposure to air pollution,” testified Dr. Nikita Habermehl, a specialist in pediatric emergency medicine who lives near a landfill in Larimer County, at the February 26 public hearing, “leading to increased rates of respiratory issues and headaches and asthma worsened by poor air quality.” —By Jennifer Oldham, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

When the computer or phone you’re using right now blinks its last blink and you drop it off for recycling, do you know what happens? At the recycling center, powerful magnets will pull out steel. Spinning drums will toss aluminum into bins. Copper wires will get neatly bundled up for resale. But as the conveyor belt keeps rolling, tiny specks of valuable, lesser-known materials such as gallium, indium, and tantalum will be left behind. Those tiny specks are critical materials. They’re essential for building new technology, and they’re in short supply in the U.S. They could be reused, but there’s a problem: Current recycling methods make recovering critical minerals from e-waste too costly or hazardous, so many recyclers simply skip them. Sadly, most of these hard-to-recycle materials end up buried in landfills or get mixed into products like cement. But it doesn’t have to be this way. New technology is starting to make a difference. As demand for these critical materials keeps growing, discarded electronics can become valuable resources. My colleagues and I at West Virginia University are developing a new technology to change how we recycle. Instead of using toxic chemicals, our approach uses electricity, making it safer, cleaner, and more affordable to recover critical materials from electronics. How much e-waste are we talking about? Americans generated about 2.7 million tons of electronic waste in 2018, according to the latest federal data. Including uncounted electronics, the U.S. recycles only about 15% of its total e-waste, suggests a survey by the United Nations. Even worse, nearly half the electronics that people in Northern America sent to recycling centers end up shipped overseas. They often land in scrapyards, where workers may use dangerous methods like burning or leaching with harsh chemicals to pull out valuable metals. These practices can harm both the environment and workers’ health. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency restricts these methods in the U.S. The tiny specks matter Critical minerals are in most of the technology around you. Every phone screen has a super-thin layer of a material called indium tin oxide. LEDs glow because of a metal called gallium. Tantalum stores energy in tiny electronic parts called capacitors. All of these materials are flagged as “high risk” on the U.S. Department of Energy’s critical materials list. That means the U.S. relies heavily on these materials for important technologies, but their supply could easily be disrupted by conflicts, trade disputes, or shortages. Right now, just a few countries, including China, control most of the mining, processing, and recovery of these materials, making the U.S. vulnerable if those countries decide to limit exports or raise prices. These materials aren’t cheap, either. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey reports that gallium was priced between $220 to $500 per kilogram in 2024. That’s 50 times more expensive than common metals like copper, at $9.48 per kilogram in 2024. Revolutionizing recycling with microwaves At West Virginia University’s Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, I and materials scientist Edward Sabolsky asked a simple question: Could we find a way to heat only specific parts of electronic waste to recover these valuable materials? If we could focus the heat on just the tiny specks of critical minerals, we might be able to recycle them easily and efficiently. The solution we found: microwaves. This equipment isn’t very different from the microwave ovens you use to heat food at home, just bigger and more powerful. The basic science is the same: Electromagnetic waves cause electrons to oscillate, creating heat. In our approach, though, we’re not heating water molecules like you do when cooking. Instead, we heat carbon, the black residue that collects around a candle flame or car tailpipe. Carbon heats up much faster in a microwave than water does. But don’t try this at home; your kitchen microwave wasn’t designed for such high temperatures. In our recycling method, we first shred the electronic waste, mix it with materials called fluxes that trap impurities, and then heat the mixture with microwaves. The microwaves rapidly heat the carbon that comes from the plastics and adhesives in the e-waste. This causes the carbon to react with the tiny specks of critical materials. The result: a tiny piece of pure, sponge-like metal about the size of a grain of rice. This metal can then be easily separated from leftover waste using filters. So far, in our laboratory tests, we have successfully recovered about 80% of the gallium, indium, and tantalum from e-waste, at purities between 95% and 97%. We have also demonstrated how it can be integrated with existing recycling processes. Why the Department of Defense is interested Our recycling technology got its start with help from a program funded by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Many important technologies, from radar systems to nuclear reactors, depend on these special materials. While the Department of Defense uses less of them than the commercial market, they are a national security concern. We’re planning to launch larger pilot projects next to test the method on smartphone circuit boards, LED lighting parts, and server cards from data centers. These tests will help us fine-tune the design for a bigger system that can recycle tons of e-waste per hour instead of just a few pounds. That could mean producing up to 50 pounds of these critical minerals per hour from every ton of e-waste processed. If the technology works as expected, we believe this approach could help meet the nation’s demand for critical materials. How to make e-waste recycling common One way e-waste recycling could become more common is if Congress held electronics companies responsible for recycling their products and recovering the critical materials inside. Closing loopholes that allow companies to ship e-waste overseas, instead of processing it safely in the U.S., could also help build a reserve of recovered critical minerals. But the biggest change may come from simple economics. Once technology becomes available to recover these tiny but valuable specks of critical materials quickly and affordably, the U.S. can transform domestic recycling and take a big step toward solving its shortage of critical materials. Terence Musho is an associate professor of engineering at West Virginia University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Obalende bus terminus is one of Lagos’s most important transport nodes and a ‘graveyard’ for old danfos, which in Yoruba means ‘hurry’. These yellow‑painted minibuses form the backbone of Lagos’s informal transport system and are mostly second‑hand imports from the global north. Located in the heart of Lagos Island, Obalende is one of the first areas to be developed east of the lagoon that splits Lagos into two main halves: the Island and the Mainland. It receives a large portion of urban commuters daily, especially those entering Lagos Island for work. Obalende plays a critical role in the cycle of material reuse across the city. The life of a danfo does not end at retirement; it continues through a vast network of informal markets and recyclers that sustain entire communities. Their metal parts are either repurposed to fix other buses or sold as scrap at markets such as Owode Onirin. Located about 25km away on the Lagos Mainland, Owode Onirin, which means ‘money iron market’ in Yoruba, is a major hub for recycled metals. Waste collectors scour the city’s demolition sites for brass and mild steel; they find copper, bronze and aluminium in discarded vehicles. These materials are then processed and sold to companies such as African Foundries and Nigerian Foundries, as well as to local smiths who transform them into building parts, moulds and decorative objects. Sorters, welders and artisans form the backbone of this circular micro‑economy. Their labour breathes new life into discarded matter.  Lagos has a State Waste Management Authority, but it is fraught with politicking and inefficient in managing the city’s complex waste cycle. In the absence of intelligent state strategies, it falls on people to engineer solutions. They add armatures, build networks and modulate the static thresholds and borders imposed by the state. Today, these techniques and intelligences, born out of scarcity, are collectively labelled ‘informality’, a term that flattens their ingenuity.  Across the streets of Obalende and around its central roundabout, kiosks and pop‑up shops dominate the landscape. Most are constructed from materials such as timber reclaimed from collapsed buildings or fallen fascias, along with salvaged tarpaulins. Stones and concrete blocks found at demolition sites are moulded into anchors using discarded plastic paint buckets, serving as bases for umbrellas offering relief from the scorching Lagos sun. To anticipate flash flooding, many structures are raised slightly above ground on short stilts. Space, which is in short supply, is creatively repurposed to serve different functions at various times of the day; a single location might host breakfast vendors in the morning, fruit sellers in the afternoon and medicine hawkers at night. Due to its proximity to the city centre, Obalende experiences constant population shifts. Most entering the city at this node have no means of livelihood and often become salvagers. Under the curling ends of the Third Mainland Bridge, for example, a community of migrants gathers, surviving by scavenging motor parts, sometimes from old danfos, zinc roofing sheets and other materials of meagre value. Discarded mattresses, bedding and mosquito nets are repurposed as shelter beneath the noisy overpass, which becomes both workplace and home. In the absence of supportive state frameworks, communities like those in Obalende create micro‑responses to urban precarity. Their fluid, multifunctional spaces are adaptive and resilient architectures resulting from necessity, survival and material intelligence.  ‘Informality as a way of life is inherently circular in its use of space and materials’ In Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria and one of the most populated in Africa, two thirds of the population live on less than US$1 a day, according to Amnesty International. This speaks not only to income levels but to multidimensional poverty. Unlike global cities such as Mumbai, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro, where poorer demographics are largely confined to specific neighbourhoods at the margins, informality in Lagos is not peripheral but integral to how the city functions, defying the rigid thresholds and boundaries of formal urban planning.  Across Lagos, self‑sustaining circular economies flourish. Orile, a metal market located on the mainland, is one of the sites where discarded metals from sites in Lagos can be sold as part of a recycling system. Further out in the suburbs of Lagos, also on the mainland, is the Katangua Market, which is the biggest second‑hand clothes market in the city. In Nigeria’s largest hardware technology hub, Computer Village, just south of Lagos in Ikeja, used electrical and electronic equipment (UEEE) is sold for parts. A TRT World report notes that about 18,300 tonnes of UEEE arrive in Nigeria annually – although the number varies in other studies to as much as 54,000 tonnes smuggled in – with the majority coming from Europe, closely followed by the US and China.  Computer Village evolved into a dense network of shops, stalls and kiosks between 1998 and 2000, just before Nigeria adopted early digital cellular network technology. The market sits just minutes from the local airport and the Ikeja High Court, but its edges are fluid, spilling out from the Ikeja Underbridge. Over time, formal plots have dissolved into an evolving mesh of trade; the streets are lined with kiosks and carts, built from repurposed plywood, corrugated metal and tarpaulin, that come and go. Space is not owned but claimed, temporarily held, sublet and reshuffled.  Today, Computer Village generates an estimated US$2 billion in annual revenue. Yet most of the shops lack permanence and are constantly at risk of demolition or displacement. In March this year, over 500 shops were demolished overnight at Owode Onirin; in 2023, shopping complexes at Computer Village were torn down in a similar way. The state has continuously announced plans to relocate Computer Village to Katangua Market, with demolition of parts of Katangua Market itself making way for the move in 2020. Urban development patterns in Lagos prioritise formal sectors while ignoring self‑organised makers and traders. This contributes to spatial exclusion, where such communities are often under threat of eviction and relocation.  Discarded devices eventually make their way to landfills. Olusosun, in the very heart of Lagos, is one of Africa’s largest landfills. Over 10,000 tonnes of waste are delivered daily, and more than 5,000 scavengers live and work here, sifting through an artificial mountain of refuse in search of value: aluminium, copper, plastic, cloth. The waste stream, enlarged by the influx of used hardware and fast fashion from the global north, creates both livelihood and hazard. Recent studies have shown that most of the residents in and around the site are exposed to harmful air conditions that affect their lungs. Additionally, the water conditions around the site show infiltration of toxic substances. Scavengers have lost their lives in the process of harvesting metals from discarded electronics.  More than a landfill, Olusosun is a stage for the politics of waste in the global south. Poor regulation enables the flow of unserviceable imports; widespread poverty creates demand for cheap, second‑hand goods. The result is a fragile, and at times dangerous, ecosystem where the absence of the state makes room for informal innovation, such as space reuse and temporary architecture, material upcycling and recycling. In Olusosun, metals are often extracted, crushed and smelted through dangerous processes like open burning. Copper and gold harvested from the ashes then make their way back into products and institutions, such as the insets of bronze or aluminium in a piece of furniture that might eventually travel back to the global north. In its usual fashion, the government has promised to decommission the Olusosun site, but little has been seen in terms of an effective plan to repurpose the site under the state’s so‑called ‘advanced waste treatment initiative’. Informality as a way of life is inherently circular in its use of space and materials. It embodies adaptability, resilience and an intuitive response to economic and environmental conditions. The self‑built infrastructures in Lagos reveal the creativity and resilience of communities navigating the challenges of urban life. Now is the time for designers, policymakers and community leaders to work together and rethink urban development in a way that is more sustainable and responsive to the needs of the people who make cities thrive. The question is not whether informal economies will continue to exist, but how they can be designed into wider city planning – making them part of the solution, not the problem. Featured in the May 2025 issue: Circularity Lead image: Olympia De Maismont / AFP / Getty 2025-05-30 Reuben J Brown Share

If you've ever worked at an industrial design or architecture firm, you've seen that closet or series of storage bins filled with material samples. Eventually there's a major office cleanup to reclaim space, and a bunch of that stuff goes. Goes where? Into landfill, according to Swatchbox, a sample-providing middleman between manufacturers and designers. "The architecture and design industry generates tons of waste from specifying materials," they write. "Every day, thousands of physical samples (tiles, textiles, laminates) are shipped out to architects and designers globally. Most end up in landfills after a single use." That's hardly a good look, if your firm touts their green credentials. To combat the problem, Swatchbox has launced a program called Second Life Samples—the first of its kind, they say—where firms can send material samples back to them, even if you didn't get them from Swatchbox. The company will then recirculate or recycle them.Since 2018, the company has already been doing this with samples they themselves have provided, but by opening up the program to all samples regardless of the source, reckon they can reduce waste by "up to 90% in participating architecture and design firms." After assessing returned samples for quality, those in good condition that are still labeled (a sample isn't much good unless you know where it came from) are made available on Swatchbox's online platform. As for the rest, "Unlabeled, discontinued, or lightly worn samples are made available to students and educators. Any material that is not recoverable due to damage is processed through Swatchbox recycling partners." The program is open to firms located in the U.S. and the U.K. You can sign up here.

In a clever fusion of sustainability, modern aesthetics, and made-to-order charm, the Tilt + Shift Collection of lighting is proof that eco-conscious design doesn’t have to dim your style. Designed by David Rockwell of Rockwell Group for Toronto-based design platform Stackabl founded by Jeff Forrest – best known for turning manufacturing waste into covetable objects – Tilt + Shift is also a timely reminder that sustainability can’t be a side note anymore. As climate change continues to reshape our world, the way we design, source, and produce matters more than ever. The good news is that Stackabl shows us that doing good for the planet can also look really good. The collection originally launched at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan at the Casa Cork installation for Cork Collective, Rockwell Group’s initiative for cork-related projects in collaboration with Corticeira Amorim (a platform that gathers global designers to explore the creative potential of cork) and BlueWell. But this isn’t the first time Stackabl landed on Rockwell’s radar. Back in 2023 at Design Miami, he was drawn to the Arcilla collection of pendant lights, which spotlighted Stackabl’s fresh approach to sustainable design. Two years later, the two join forces on Tilt + Shift – a full-circle moment. “I was instantly drawn to Stackabl’s dedication to sustainability and the craftsmanship behind their work,” Rockwell reflects. “When I received one of their pendants as a gift, I was struck by how well the material and color palette were integrated into the design. We wanted to take that same creative approach and apply it to the Tilt and Shift lamps, using cork as the base material to create a new kind of balance and contrast with the felted wool discs. The result is a collection that feels both modern and timeless, playful yet sophisticated.” The lineup includes two Tilt table lamps and three Shift floor lamps. Each piece pairs sleek, sculptural stacks of felt discs with soft, touch-dimmable LED lighting that casts a warm, cozy down-glow. The “shade” is elegantly cantilevered over a solid cork base – a material celebrated in sustainable design for being both renewable and endlessly recyclable. Customizable colorways let the lamps either blend in or stand out from it settings and cater to different tastes. If more brands embraced Stackabl’s mission to “turn waste into wonders” and its goal to divert 500 tons of textile waste from landfills by 2029, the planet would no doubt be better off. Collections like Tilt + Shift prove that sustainable design doesn’t have to be the exception: it can, and should, be the new standard. Following its soft launch in Milan, the Tilt + Shift Collection made its full United States debut at ICFF in New York this week. For those ready to bring one home, pre-orders are already open, with plenty of options to make each lamp truly your own. Whether you’re drawn to the tactile contrast of cork and felt, the sculptural silhouette, or the sustainable ethos behind it all, the Tilt and Shift lamps are a bright idea in more ways than one. To learn more about the Tilt + Shift Collection by David Rockwell for Stackabl, visit stackabl.shop. Photography by Patrick Biller.

A successful game of fetch I helped a lost dog’s AirTag ping its owner: An ode to replaceable batteries The most repair-friendly device Apple makes needs to stick with coin batteries. Kevin Purdy – May 21, 2025 5:31 pm | 24 This is Serene, a 7-year-old pitbull mix available for adoption at the Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, DC. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance This is Serene, a 7-year-old pitbull mix available for adoption at the Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, DC. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Out of all the books I read for my formal education, one bit, from one slim paperback, has lodged the deepest into my brain. William Blundell's The Art and Craft of Feature Writing offers a "selective list of what readers like." It starts with a definitive No. 1: "Dogs, followed by other cute animals and well-behaved small children." People, Blundell writes, are your second-best option, providing they are doing or saying something interesting. I have failed to provide Ars Technica readers with a dog story during nearly three years here. Today, I intend to fix that. This is a story about a dog, but also a rare optimistic take on a ubiquitous "smart" product, one that helped out a very good girl. Note: The images in this post are not of the aforementioned dog, so as to protect their owner's privacy. The Humane Rescue Alliance of Washington, DC, provided photos of adoptable dogs with some resemblance to that dog. Hello, stranger My wife and I were sitting with our dog on our front porch on a recent weekend morning. We were drinking coffee, reading, and enjoying DC's tiny window for temperate spring weather. I went inside for a moment; when I came back, my dog was inside, but my wife was not. Confused, I cracked open the door to look out. A dog, not my own, stuck its nose into the door gap, eager to sniff me out. "There's a dog here?" my wife said, partly to herself. "She just ran up on the porch. I have no idea where she came from." Rexi, a nearly 3-year-old mixed breed, is being fostered and ready for adoption at the Humane Rescue Alliance. The author's wife thinks Rexi looks the most like their unexpected dog visitor. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance Rexi, a nearly 3-year-old mixed breed, is being fostered and ready for adoption at the Humane Rescue Alliance. The author's wife thinks Rexi looks the most like their unexpected dog visitor. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance I secured my dog inside, then headed out to meet this fast-moving but friendly interloper. She had a collar, but no leash, and looked well-groomed, healthy, and lightly frantic. The collar had a silicone band on it, holding one of Apple's AirTags underneath. I pulled out the AirTag, tapped it against my phone, and nothing happened. While my wife posted on our neighborhood's various social outlets (Facebook, Nextdoor, and a WhatsApp group for immediate neighbors), I went into the garage and grabbed a CR2032 battery. That's not something everyone has, but I have a few AirTags, along with a bit of a home automation habit. After some pressing, twisting, and replacing, the AirTag beeped and returned to service. I tapped the AirTag against my phone, this time receiving a link to a webpage with the tag's serial number and the last four digits of its owner's phone number. I had not yet needed to actually find something truly lost with an AirTag, so I looked up how it worked. Once you set an AirTag in your Apple account to "Lost" status, you can then choose to have a full phone number and message appear to anybody who taps it with their device (iOS or Android). If you don't know that your AirTag or Find-My-compatible item is missing and mark it that way, you can't preemptively have it offer up details. Maybe Apple should change that, for certain kinds of tracking. Noma, a 1-year-old pit bull mix, at the Humane Rescue Alliance. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance Noma, a 1-year-old pit bull mix, at the Humane Rescue Alliance. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance I had to leave the house, leaving my wife to negotiate space and sight lines between our concerned, confused dog and this excited newcomer. The local animal control encouraged my wife to monitor social channels before dropping the dog off at their facility. After two hours of unexpected fostering, we were anxiously texting one another. We were glad to have gotten this dog off the street and into a home with leashes and a crate available, but we had to make a decision before the animal shelter closed for the day. Then the doorbell rang. The dog's owner, led by the AirTag, asked if we had her dog. She explained how the dog got loose and pledged to keep a fresh battery in there from now on. My wife said goodbye to her temporary charge, and I came home to find both her and my dog far more relaxed. Maybe the dog's owner would have seen postings on Facebook or Nextdoor, though I cannot blame anybody who doesn't want those networks in their life. Perhaps a neighborhood phone chain would have come through, or the shelter could have connected us. But Apple's coin battery-powered nub came through in the nick of time, and I'm grateful. That’s a good AirTag—now, stay Cresha, a 3-year-old mixed-breed dog, is available for adoption. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance Cresha, a 3-year-old mixed-breed dog, is available for adoption. Credit: Humane Rescue Alliance I was working at iFixit when rumors circulated about Apple developing a "Tile-like" item tracker in early 2019. The teardown and communications teams at iFixit were largely expecting Apple to release another tiny product that was impossible to fix or have its batteries swapped, filling the gaps in landfills alongside AirPods. Tile, one of the first in the Bluetooth tracking market, had introduced replaceable batteries a few months prior. But Apple, at that point still defending its butterfly MacBook keyboards and holding tight to Lightning ports, seemed unlikely to go the way of the common denominator. But Apple chose wisely. After addressing some of the early concerns about their potential misuses (though others remain), AirTags have become very handy devices. Some dog owners go for GPS tracker collars, which might fare better in rural areas. But it's a good bet that somebody with an iPhone will get close enough to your dog—or wallet, or keys—to update its location. Even if they don't have an iPhone to provide a location ping, they can get some information on who owns this tag. Apple is seemingly gearing up to offer a new AirTag, one with purportedly greater range and fewer avenues for privacy-invading misuse. I humbly request that the new model continue to be powered by a coin cell battery. When something important goes missing—especially something that likes ear scritches and pumpkin treats—it is best not to have to find a charging cable or magnetic charging pad, or discover the cells inside are dead. Coin cells are not perfectly recyclable, because nothing really is, but they're generally much easier to handle than lithium-ion waste. I have AirTags on my family's bikes, keys, wallets, and a couple other things. Depending on what the next AirTag looks like, I'm keen to get one on my dog's collar, too. Take the battery warnings seriously, and they can help some wayward good boys and girls. And I hope they made this human, telling a story about coin batteries, momentarily interesting. Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 24 Comments

Commissioned when material reuse was banned in public projects, a recycling centre in Antwerp by Bovenbouw Architectuur confronts the absurdity of waste ‘Waste is a religious thing,’ says Nick Shay, the main character of Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld from 1997. ‘We entomb contaminated waste with a sense of reverence and dread. It is necessary to respect what we discard.’ Nick is a waste manager. In 1978, he attends a conference in the Mojave Desert. Jesse Detwiler, a ‘waste theorist whose provocations had spooked the industry’, lectures about the scenery of the future, which will be, according to him, a scenery of waste. ‘Basic household waste’, he says, ‘ought to be placed in the cities that produce it. Bring garbage into the open. Let people see it and respect it. Don’t hide your waste facilities. Make an architecture of waste. Design gorgeous buildings to recycle waste and invite people to collect their own garbage and bring it with them to the press rams and conveyors. Get to know your garbage.’ Despite Detwiler’s advice, waste management is rarely the remit of architecture. Incinerators, landfills and recycling centres are usually a matter of infrastructure, of machinery, or of landscapes that have been destroyed by being filled to the brim. In Belgium, this has changed in recent decades; the majority of public commissions – even those relating to waste management – are now a matter of architecture. In 2009, Antwerp‑based practice Bovenbouw Architectuur won a competition organised by the City of Antwerp for the masterplan of its recycling centres, referred to as containerparken. The very first public recycling facility in Belgium opened in 1976, next to the incinerator of the municipality of Izegem, close to the French border. It could boast of three containers: one for glass, one for metal and one for combustible household waste. At this time, garden waste was collected separately and occasionally incinerated together with fuel oil and old tyres; economy and efficiency, rather than environmental considerations, were the main motivations for selective collection. A decade of national protests against the numerous rubbish dumps and the (profitable) import of foreign waste followed. This situation started to change on a national level in 1981, when the Flemish government issued a ‘waste decree’ and established the Openbare Vlaamse Afvalstoffenmaatschappij (Public Flemish Waste Management Institution or OVAM). Since then, foreign waste has continued to be imported, but it is processed instead of dumped. Waste collection at home started to be separated, and in many Flemish cities, five categories were collected weekly or biweekly: plastics, compostable waste, paper, glass and everything else. By means of generous subvention, OVAM also encouraged every municipality to open a recycling centre – with an estimated cost of about €75,000 each. These facilities had a quadruple purpose: to prevent illegal dumping, to promote recycling, to make the population aware of waste, but also to save on energy and raw materials. Construction and demolition waste could be used for local road paving; garden and pruning waste could be composted on site; OVAM took care of all the dangerous waste while contracts with specialised firms, foreign or domestic, were necessary for all the other materials. The first recycling facility in the city of Antwerp opened in 1988; today, almost 40 years later, the city has eight container parks, and five of them have been upgraded by Bovenbouw since they won the open competition in 2009; a facility at Kielsbroek, to the west of the city and next to its main highway junction, opened at the end of 2024. The site is next to a junction of highways in an industrial zone of warehouses, set among mature trees and vegetation. The city, however, is very close: trains whizz by, and new towers of apartments are visible in the distance, as is the river Scheldt, and the petrol‑blue substation by noAarchitecten built in 2009, that supplies a large part of Antwerp with electricity. The entrance of the facility is accompanied by a building for workers, housing a reception, staff room, toilets and changing rooms. The roof is extended to form a large steel canopy supported by a large laminated‑timber beam, under which hazardous waste is stored, such as liquids, batteries or polystyrene. The building’s facades are made out of red bricks, stacked lying on their long edge, so the two holes that puncture each brick are exposed – a kind of ‘improper use’ that draws attention to the specificity and tactility of materials, a tactility shared by everything that passes through the hands of the visitors into the containers. A circular window is cut out from the outer leaves of brickwork at the corner of the building, exposing the inside of the bricks and leaving the edges raw, in a playful but also slightly brutal, DIY way, revealing the different possibilities of banal building materials. The windows offer views of a square, at the project’s centre, intended as a semi‑public meeting place. In reality, visitors are mostly concerned with their waste; an initial part of the project to organise workshops and infosessions – about, for example, composting – has been dropped by the city. Opposite the long building, the square is demarcated by a row of containers and their retaining walls, made out of prefabricated concrete elements, that can be, so the architects argue, disassembled and reused later. An existing height difference in the terrain was preserved: the containers are set into this lower level – accessible only to lorries that come to collect the waste – and visitors are able to drop rubbish into them from the higher square without having to climb a stepladder. Yellow numbers for the containers, hung high on a steel structure with vertical tube lights, indicate what belongs where. The visitor circulation – for cars, although nothing prevents you from arriving by cargo bike – was duplicated to allow for two circuits: one free and one paid‑for (for rubble and combustible waste), accessible via a weighbridge. Once on the square, however, it is easy to switch between the two zones (and, for example, to deliver combustible waste without paying), which is why it was recently decided to send everyone past the weighbridge. The container park does not escape surveillance, and compared with other Belgian cities, everything in Antwerp is strictly regulated. It is, for example, forbidden to take other people’s waste home with you, even if it is still perfectly usable, although the option to put things aside for charity shops is offered. The new Kielsbroek recycling centre was a slow process. In the proposed concept from 2012, the architects explained that they wanted to favour ‘creativity and craftmanship’ over ‘industrial production’. At the same time, they regretted ‘the ban on the reuse of material in a public tender’, which is why they decided to ‘use as much ecological building material as possible,’ (wood insulated with cellulose, for example, or OSB with reduced formaldehyde), ‘without resorting to literal reuse’. Bovenbouw is currently participating in competitions for containerparken elsewhere and, according to founder Dirk Somers, they will pursue ecological standards and approaches more strictly. Thanks to the pioneering work of specialist Belgian design practice Rotor, the legislation in the country has changed: since 2020, the principles of the circular economy are encouraged. The guidelines no longer stipulate the exclusive use of new materials; recycled or reused components have become more accessible and less expensive. For reasons of continuity, however, but also because the client preferred a smooth and efficient process, the starting points of the masterplan from 2012 were preserved. The project replaces an older and smaller facility, a few hundred metres away, from which some elements were reused, such as the storage volumes for chemical materials. Bovenbouw’s material and organisational approach in Kielsbroek – but also at the four other locations – makes it possible to get to know your garbage, as DeLillo’s character phrased it; the contents of the open containers are visible, and although the building’s materials are not recycled or reused, they are conspicuously presented as ‘materials’. It is a space in which to confront that weird and ultimately absurd activity of recycling. Why, after all, bother acquiring something that you have to throw away later anyway? Recycling, in this sense, is what continues to enable production and consumerism. This is how Slavoj Žižek expresses it in his recent book Against Progress: ‘The ecological dream‑notion of total recycling (in which every remainder is used again)’ is ‘the ultimate capitalist dream.’ At the same time, the optimisation of recycling is equally dependent on the industry. Most of the waste in Kielsbroek travels to the port of Antwerp‑Bruges, which also houses the largest chemical cluster in Europe. The private firm Indaver processes approximately five million tons of waste annually, coming from large‑scale factories, public authorities (such as the city of Antwerp), but also from other waste companies, including those from abroad. Indaver has 2,300 collaborators all over Europe, and achieved a turnover in 2023 of €871 million. At the Hooge Maey, some 20km north of Kielsbroek, a 1960s landfill closed in 2018; a new one close by is still in use, while rubbish continues to be destroyed at high temperature in rotary kilns. ‘How’s the waste business?’ someone asks Nick in Underworld. His reply: ‘Booming. The waste business. Bigger by the minute.’ 2025-05-19 Christophe Van Gerrewey Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now