The Garbage Game

In the Garbage Game, http://www.gothamgazette.com/games/garbage.php, you decide what to do with the garbage of New York City. The purpose of the game is to showcase how decisions made by both individuals and city officials will affect the overall garbage situation. Each decision made by an individual to throw something in the trash or recycle it can cost the city and its taxpayers money and affect the environment. In addition,the decisions made by the city on how and where to process the garbage and recyclables can also cost money and affect the environment.

After a few introductory slides discussing the amount of trash generated by New Yorkers each year and the cost of disposing of it, the Garbage Game is divided into two parts. In part one, the player answers several questions about their personal recycling and garbage habits. These questions cover standard topics such as what they do with plastic bottles, food scraps, diapers and electronic devices. For each question, the player is presented with several options. By resting their mouse over the option, an information box will appear that provides statistics or more details about the option. The player selects the option they are most likely to take and then receives immediate feedback. Players will have their sorted recycling increased if they made a good choice and poor decisions will result in more unsorted garbage being added to their totals.

In part two of the Garbage Game, the player assumes the role of Sanitation Commissioner and must decide what New York City should do with the recyclables and remaining garbage. The Sanitation Commissioner must make decisions such as where to collect recyclables, how and where to process the recyclables and garbage, and who should do it. In this part of the game, the player does not receive immediate feedback on their decisions. Instead they are provided more information on how these types of decisions have affected New York City in the past. At the end of the section, the player does receive a summary of the distances traveled by the vehicles used to move the garbage and recyclables and how much it would cost.

The creators of the Garbage Game also included a script that the players can add to their personal blogs or websites that announces how much refuse they moved and across what distance. The script includes a link to the game, which will help generate more interest in this topic. They also include an option to sign-up for newsletters related to waste management in New York City.

Overall, the Garbage Game is very educational. It provides lots of details about current recycling trends, the costs of various options, and may cause the player to think twice about some of their personal habits. Many players will want to repeat the game to see what happens if they vary their choices. One drawback to the game is that the scoring process is not clearly explained at the beginning of the game. In addition, some of the initial feedback screens contain lots of text, so it is hard to pick out the scoring information.