Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags used for tracking items like shipping containers and pallets of goods have been around for years.

ECONOMIST: Tech.view

At one of them, East Bridgwater community school, two rusting shipping containers have been used to expand school facilities, with reports that 14 toilets just serve 600 female pupils at another school, Haygrove.

BBC: School building cuts: Hard-hit areas

With his wife, he went to Sri Lanka to see how he might help and considered--then quickly rejected--the conventional approach of shipping containers full of used bikes donated by Americans to the devastated areas.

FORBES: Creative Giving