Newcastle University Pilots "Sinister" BinCam Scheme

9 June 2011

Researchers at Newcastle University have introduced a new scheme that takes pictures of your bin contents and posts it on Facebook in an attempt to encourage people to recycle more and to demonstrate the positive uses of social media

According a Daily Mail headline, the BinCam is a "snooping device that can record everything you throw away".

Families will be rated on how efficiently they recycle by a town hall monitoring office.

Researcher Anja Thieme explains how it works on her website: "BinCam is a personal informatics system - developed by Jack Weeden - to monitor individuals' food waste and recycling behaviour. It uses an augmented kitchen bin to automatically capture and log an individual's waste management activity.

"Each time the bin is used, a mobile phone installed in the inside of the lid captures an image of the contents and uploads it to a Facebook application. The application offers various visualisations of individuals' bin usage to increase their awareness of the items they disposed of.

"Applying Facebook as a platform for reflection offers the potential to engage individuals to regularly use the application. In addition, we regard the social network of Facebook, with its communication dynamics and social influences, as a powerful source in changing personal attitudes and behaviour."

The researchers behind the project are now seeking to implement six-month trials to better assess the scheme's potential, but have already noted many potential problems, particularly over privacy and impediments to behavourial change.

Doretta Cocks of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections said: "We keep being told there are curbs on the way councils are allowed to spy on people.

"They put microchips in the bins ready for pay-as-you-throw bin taxes, and that died a death. I hope councils realise that this sinister idea is taking things too far."

The researcher briefing paper states that the sharing of personal information on a public platform raises several privacy and ethical concerns, with items that have been thrown away being normally objects that people necessarily want to be identified with anymore.

One possibility to address this issue could be the creation of bin identities that only refer to a bin instead of referring to a specific person or shared occupancy bins.

Future trials will be based in both England and Germany.

Darrel Moore