Environmental Club members visit Garbage Museum

Posted by: Debbie Bowley on Sat, 03 February 2007 18:45:53

Ashley Blau, ’07, President of Lauralton’s Environmental Club, writes about the January 31 visit to the Garbage Museum in Stratford, CT:

Once the yellow Winkle bus came to a stop, the driver reached out and pulled the lever allowing us to step outside onto the sparkly asphalt at the Children’s Garbage Museum. Our group was of an unusual age--fifteen teenage girls from Lauralton Hall’s Environmental Club, all very eager to be a part of the first field trip in the club’s history. Our chaperone and former employee of the museum, Ms. Fosse-Previs, informed us that the shimmering ground was made from recycled glass.

The first thing we noticed as we walked through the entrance was the enormous "Trash-o-saurus" representing the amount of garbage the average American generates each year. Next we met our ever-so-enthusiastic tour guide. I imagined we transformed into the younger versions of ourselves when we walked through those doors, tagging along after our guide, sitting Indian-style on the carpet. Like sponges, we absorbed every word our guide said as she used an oversized picture book to emphasize her points. We were quickly jolted into a deeper realization of the severity of the problem of waste by the pictures and facts. For example, in Connecticut alone each person generates approximately 4.2 pounds of trash in one day. So in just one year, over five billion pounds of waste are produced.

There are many steps and solutions to facing the challenges of waste management. First we need to reduce waste as a society. This can be done by purchasing durable items and products with less packaging. Secondly we must reuse where we can by using a reusable coffee mug for all those Starbucks stops, or donating clothes to Goodwill. The third step is recycling. Items that can be recycled include plastics, paper, glass and aluminum.
 
After learning about recycling in our state, our group was able to witness first hand how all the different items from our recycling bins are sorted. As we watched the workers perform their very important, yet very tedious, job, I was surprised to learn that there has not been an opening for the position of bottle sorting in fourteen years!

At the end of the trip, we walked around and looked at the various exhibitions set up in the museum. It was a very informational trip that turned out to be a good time as well. We learned a lot that we can now turn around and teach to Lauralton. For example, we learned that everyone should remove and dispose of bottle caps before recycling bottles. This small action would greatly help our friends at the Waste Management.