Live from the garbage: @trashcanlife is the best worst Twitter feed
Hello, this is container 102133100006377 in LARKHILL, United Kingdom. Based on my fill-up history, I expect to be full on Thursday, September 5th 2019.
— Trashcan Life (@trashcanlife) September 6, 2018
Is this performance art? I’m pretty sure this is performance art.
This morning, I stumbled upon @trashcanlife, a Twitter account created by Enevo, a “waste technology as a service” company that, as far as I can tell from its website, puts sensors in trash cans and has trash get picked up on a slightly different schedule than normal. To that end, they started a Twitter account for their trash cans to cheerily tell the world important information about themselves. The account, and the data it offers, makes smart-trash technology seem like something that would inconvenience a character in a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book.
Hello, this is container 202126100001289 in Fort Carson, United States. Based on my fill-up history, I expect to be full on Thursday, November 8th 2018.
— Trashcan Life (@trashcanlife) September 29, 2018
Hello, this is container 100419100038157 in Bulford Camp, United Kingdom. The signal strength of my cellular network connection is 42%.
— Trashcan Life (@trashcanlife) September 30, 2018
I know this might sound a little radical to all the techno-futurists out there, but we already have a really effective way of telling how much trash is in a thing, and it does not require cellular service. It’s called “looking in the trash.”
Hello, this is container 100419100038913 in Perth, United Kingdom. My current internal temperature is 15 C.
— Trashcan Life (@trashcanlife) September 3, 2018
I have no idea why a person would need to know such information, but if you really need to know the temperature inside a thing with garbage in it, can’t you just open it up, wave your hand around inside it for a second, and see if it feels warm in there?
Hello, this is container 100416100145029 in Orlando, United States. I am 2% full.
— Trashcan Life (@trashcanlife) September 2, 2018
Perhaps the most impressive thing about @trashcanlife is that it’s been sending little messages about garbage into the void since 2014. I am convinced that this Twitter feed, as well as the company behind it, is an elaborate performance art project meant to dissuade people from ever connecting their trash can to the internet.
