back to game list


Garbage Glut     (0 comments)

Play Game >>

Age Range Ages 14 and up Brief Description

Garbage Glut is a choose-your-own adventure in waste management, available on Gotham Gazette. The game asks everyone to take a turn as sanitation commissioner, making key decisions about how the city should handle its waste.

Release Date November 13, 2007

Developer Gotham Gazette with Isotope Media

Project Lead Amanda Hickman

Press Coverage

Blue Marble Blog - The Garbage Game http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/11/6215_the_garbage_gam.html NRDC - Ian Wilker’s blog - Gaming with Garbage http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/iwilker/gaming_with_garbage.html Garbage Time http://gothamist.com/2007/11/14/garbage_time_1.php Play With Your Virtual Garbage http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2007/11/odds_and_ends_127.html Mark Caserta http://3rliving.blogspot.com/2007/11/garbage-game.html Green With Envy, Ridden with Guilt http://greenguilt.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/garbage-game/ The Garbage Man Can http://www.metafilter.com/66525/The-Garbage-Man-Can The Albany Project http://www.thealbanyproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1588 Going Green on Long Island http://greenlongisland.blogspot.com/2007/11/sanitation-commissioner-for-day.html The Garbage Game http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/the_garbage_game.php

Press Release URL


Full Description

The Garbage Glut, a web-based game written in PHP and MySQL asks players first to decide how much New Yorkers should be asked to sort, separate and divert their garbage before it reaches the curb. The game then shifts to big picture decisions: how much time and money should the sanitation department spend recovering resources from the waste stream and how much effort should be made to process waste locally.

At the game’s conclusion the player can see how many truck miles their sanitation plan will require and how much city waste will wind up being landfilled.

The game uses a combination of real policy proposals and proposals that aren’t currently part of the policy debate. It is designed to walk players through the complex decisions that the Department of Sanitation has to make and to illustrate opportunities to reduce the city’s waste.



Purpose

Our goal is to illustrate a complex policy issue with the ultimate aim of arming our readers with better tools to bring with them into policy debates.

Metrics
 How are you measuring results?
 We use Urchin to measure traffic to the online game, and staff-power to aggregate and assess outside links. The game also tracks player choices throughout.

What outcomes have been measured?
 We know how many people have visited the game page, as well as how many have started and finished the game.

Non-Profit involved: yes


Funding Sources: Knight News Challenge and donors to Citizens Union Foundation

Budget
Overall: 75,000
Secured: 75,000

Social Issues/Channels Environment, Public Policy, Other Game Tags

news, news games, New York City , public policy, sanitation, garbage, recycling, waste management



Where you can play this game The game can be played at http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/gamesandquizzes/20071113/201/2343

Contacts
General Amanda Hickman, amanda@gothamgazette.com
Press Sara Stuart, sstuart@citizensunionfoundation.org

Comments

Submit a Comment

Submit A Comment

We would love to have you add in the discussion. Please submit your content to our editor:

Screenname (public):

Email (required but private):

Comments:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image: