It's kids drowning in the Aegean bastards!

Refugee: a person who flees for refuge or safety, especially to a foreign country, as in time of political upheaval, war, etc.

Refuse (noun): something that is discarded as worthless or useless; rubbish; trash; garbage.

It seems that EU finds no difference between Refugees and Refuses. However, I have noticed a remarkable difference. For Refuses (waste) EU has the famous waste hierarchy (prevention, reuse, recycling - recovery, treatment, disposal) while for Refugees the current mainstream policy is an uncontrolled barbarian disposal with two options. For many governments in EU, the preferable option is disposal onto the Aegean seabed. However, if this will not be possible for all of them, the next preference is to transform Greek islands in a huge landfill for refugees. In the meantime, kids are drowning each and every day in the Aegean Sea. Just read the facts and make your conclusion.

2015

590 dead refugees, most of them kids drowned, in Aegean Sea

2016

January 5th: Authorities recovered the bodies Tuesday of at least 36 migrants who drowned off Turkey after their boats overturned in rough waters as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, officials and news reports said. Twelve others were rescued.

January 8^th: Hungarian prime minister calls forfences to be built on Greece's northern border to stem flow of refugees.

January 16th: Six refugees found dead off Greek island bringing number drowned in Mediterranean in 2016 to sixty already.

January 22nd: At least 45 people, including 17 children, have died after their boats sank near two Greek islands as the number of deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean make this the deadliest January on record.

January 26^th: Danish parliament approves plan toseize assets from refugees.

January 27th: Six dead when refugee boat sunk.

January 29^th: Germany has moved to toughen itsasylum policies as Finland and Sweden announced plans to deport tens of thousands of people in a bid to contain the migrant crisis.

January 30th: 37 people drowned after their boat capsized as they attempted the crossing from Turkey to Greece. 

As of January 29, the International Organization for Migration(IOM) recorded the deaths of at least 244 refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, nearly three times the 82 people who died last January, and overwhelmingly more than the 12 people who died in January 2014. Some 55,528 refugees and migrants have arrived to Europe so far this year, according to the IOM. UNHCR figures are similar. The UN's refugee agency reports that 236 people died or went missing from January 1 until January 29, with arrivals by sea at 54,518 people.

February 1st: In the latest tragedy to strike in the AegeanSea, nearly 40 refugees and migrants died after their boat capsized off the coast of the Greek island Lesbos.

February 6^th: Austria is considering deployingtroops and police to the Balkans to reduce the flow of refugees on the route between the Turkish coast and Central Europe. “In the worst case” they will be stopped on the Austrian border, officials warn.

Lyft, General Motors and the future of driverless waste management and recycling

The recent news about General Motors' 500 million dollars investment in Lyft, laid out GM's plans to develop an on-demand network of self-driving cars with the ride-sharing service. "We think our business and personal mobility will change more in the next five years than the last 50," GM President Dan Ammann said in an interview with Reuters. The announcement came as Toyota Motor Corp and Ford Motor Co said they would adopt the same software to link smartphone apps to vehicle dashboard screens. Toyota and Ford, two of the world's biggest automakers, invited rival car companies to join them to counter the push by Apple, Alphabet, Tesla Motors Inc and others into self-driving cars, or what the industry calls autonomous vehicles. So, it is time to warm up the discussion about driverless cars' use in waste management and recycling issues. And as you probably imagine, driverless cars fit perfectLy with robotics and artificial intelligence. 

Robotics

Robots are already here. More than 22 millions of them are in use in several industrial applications, continuously working and connected to the Web. Although they have been proved both much more difficult and expensive than it was initially expected, the combination of robots with the new sensors and the advances of artificial intelligence have set the scene for an exponential growth of robotics within next 5-10 years.

Robots are already in use in the waste management industry. Back to 2010, Mitsubishi and Osaka University researchers presented a robot that identifies different plastic materials among rubbish and sorts them into piles. SADAKO in Spain has created a commercial model (Wall-B) able to sort mixed household waste, equipped with a suction system adapted to small, light and very heterogeneous target objects. The Finnish company Zen Robotics is focused in C&D waste, with its robot capable of replacing up to 15 human waste sorters.  VOLVO is currently working on a joint venture to develop a robot that interacts with the refuse truck and its driver to accomplish the work.

The potential benefits of using robots are countless but it seems that their use will be controversial: robots will replace hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers in recycling and waste management, creating a huge negative social impact and intense conflicts.

Artificial Intelligence, driverless cars and drones

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already reshaping our lives. Either it is the rapid response of Google to any search we made or the speech recognition, AI has become a business as usual element of the daily lives of billions. Driverless cars and drones are equipped with advanced AI systems that are working in combination with powerful sensors. Their evolution goes really fast.

It is no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars that take the driving out of your hands altogether. These cars will be safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. Yet, there are several issues to be resolved, but it seems that we are on the way to resolve them. If the experts are right, the most important problems will be managed before 2020.

Google recently announced that by 2017 they would start to deliver packages with drones, on a massive scale. Amazon has already published its first efforts to use drones for delivering its products. The US Federal Aviation Agency is working hard to complete a drones traffic management system until the end of 2016 and the first US database with legally licensed drones will be completed next month.

Driverless collection of recyclables will not be that difficult in certain parts of the world. And if you imagine a drone delivering your supermarket supplies to your window and taking back your recyclables, you probably are close to a reality that’s on the way. 

The consequences to traditional waste management will be tremendous. On demand hybrid collection services will become mainstream and the road towards a completely automatic and auto-optimized collection system will open. Important cost reduction is expected by the use of drones and driverless cars, but first there must be substantial investments. But, there is a high risk of more or less jobless collection and recycling systems, especially in the most technologically advanced places of the world. 

However, there is a very interesting comment on the future of driverless cars. Dave King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, in a recent interview at Washington Post mentions that the future of driverless cars is not going to be like we think. Well, let's continue the debate...