Streetlights of the future by Haneum Lee :: Something smarter than us is going to emerge

It's an idea that just seems to make a certain amount of sense: cities need streetlights, and cities need places for people to throw away their trash. Streetlights, which must stay on all night (unless they're these nifty sensor controlled ones), are a pretty sizable energy drain. But what would happen if all those people could toss their garbage into bins attached to a new kind of streetlight that could use it as fuel? And that's what we have here today. Introducing: the trash-powered street lamp.

I, for one am glad designers are out there tackling issues like this, instead of doodling futuristic cars and weapons and such. And though it'd certainly be difficult to keep up--that's a lot of composting, and a lot of maintenance on those compost-powered lights--there's no reason we shouldn't be thinking of solutions like this.