We went to the Children's Garbage Museum today, which is in danger of losing all of its funding and having to close its doors. Which would be too bad as it is a fantastic, amazing, but also cautionary place.
The giant Trash-O-Saurus meets you at the entrance, comprised of all sorts of objects reclaimed from the trash, including flip-flops, part of a small airplane, and an Oscar the Grouch toy. There's an I-Spy search with lots of different objects that kids can find (on different difficulty levels, good for all ages). There's a compost pile to crawl through and a mini-electricity-generating garbage burning facility to play with (ping pong balls are the trash and you roll them through the set-up).
But the best thing is the recycling center. Set above the processing plant of recyclables for 19 Connecticut towns and cities, an enclosed and air-conditioned (and smell-proof) walkway allows visitors to watch waste be dumped out by big trucks, pushed down holes and up conveyor belts, and sorted by hand by a roomful of employees (though, it was disturbing to see that all of them were women of color. And I can't embrace the notion that at least they have jobs, which they wouldn't if it were automated.). You'll never see your garbage and recycables the same way again.
And that was the cautionary part--pyramids of juice boxes a child would consume in a single year, a bag of plastic shopping bags the average family would collect in a year, the moutains and mountains of waste. And this is the recycling plant--just imagine the piles of garbage we can't recycle.
And another big waste would be closing this museum. Save Trash-o-saurus!
What a good idea. As Dr Johnson, the dictionary man, once said 'You smell, the garbage stinks'. If you take the kiddos to Paris, France, do not forget the sewers, not perhaps cathedrals built to the glory of poo but an essential part of any modern city. No air conditioning and no real stink either. Then let them watch parts of 'The third man' Have a nice day!
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