Trash

Solar-powered trash compactors, while not cheap, pay for themselves relatively quickly. With state and city budgets more liquid thanks to stimulus money, municipalities are snapping them up.

Tracking tags have been implanted in garbage in New York and Seattle to monitor where garbage goes and how municipal waste management systems can improve.

Residents of Santa Ana neighborhood are locking up their trash bins, hoping to eliminate the noise and trouble brought by scavengers.

The city of San Francisco approves a plan to require composting and recycling citywide by this fall, with fines kicking in within two years.

Elected officials in the Atlanta area decide to relocate a historic cemetery to make room for a landfill. NAACP officials believe the relocation fits a pattern of racial discrimination.

The city of Los Angeles forms a task force of prosecutors, police, and others to combat illegal disposal of trash all over town.