GarbageScout: A Dumpster Diver's Best Friend

I'll admit, I've done a little trash repurposing in my time. My advice? Stay away from pharmacies and any place that handles financial info--you don't want to look like an identity thief. That said, I didn't have GarbageScout to help me find the good stuff. GarbageScout is a unique application for Google Maps: Users post photos of goodies lying out in the trash or on the curb waiting to get hauled away, upload them to their Flickr accounts, and they're added to GarbageScout as items on a map that everyone can see.





GarbageScout works like this: As you pass an item on the side of the street that's ready to be hauled away, snap a photo with your camera or mobile phone, upload the photo to Flickr with the address, and tag it "garbagescout." The service will add the photos to the map. When you view the map, you can click on a trashcan to see the address where the items are located and a photo of the item or area.

It looks like a number of the entries on the map are a little old, and some of them are useless. But others are pretty recent, like a confessional stand in Brooklyn and a pile of books someone found while biking through Manhattan. Others are just funny, like the can of beer someone found on the side of a street. I can see this service being useful if you and friends communicate and use the service collaboratively.

The developers of the site have a simple goal: to get people to buy less stuff. By using technology that's already available to help people find the things they want and need for free from the things that other people are throwing away, everyone walks away happier. They have a philosophical and practical desire to make treasure out of other people's trash.

Currently GarbageScout shows items only New York City, but in theory the service should work regardless of your location. When you visit the homepage, it centers on downtown New York City, so if you start using it for your location you'll either have to zoom out and find your town, or license the source code from the developer and build your own local GarbageScout.

The code itself could be useful not just for trash, but for mapping Wi-Fi hotspots, restaurants, or any other application you can think of to combine Flickr and Google Maps. In the meantime, try the service in your hometown and get some friends to give it a shot with you; it'll certainly make dumpster diving more fun.