Help us launch a neat experiment! Three students in an MIT course—Nieman journalism fellow Ana Compoy Thompson, Dylan Halpern, and Wonyoung So—collaborated to put up a platform that will allow us to show where trash is found in the watershed and record its clean up before it reaches the Mystic River. The core of it is a website that allows you to note the presence of trash and show that you’ve removed it. There’s a brief introductory video.
You can do this on your phone in the field, or on a computer:
· Go to the site, www.mystictrashtracker.org
· Create an account or login
· Follow the directions for reporting what you find.
· See the data show up on the interactive map.
The data you see there now is just dummy data that is meant to show the first users what the results will look like. As data comes in we will remove that and show only new data points.
Most trash (including plastic) in the ocean comes from rivers. Most trash in rivers come from the land. Help us get a handle on the problem in the Mystic.
This is an experiment. Please give us feedback on how the tool works, and what you’d like to see in future iterations.
