One Man's Garbage is Another's 'Trash-o-saurus'

Most of your discards are not going to be extinct anytime soon- roughly, another 4,000 years for a modern glass bottle - but they can be recycled, recovered, and reused ...  even turned into a work of art  so they won’t be sitting in a mountain of garbage with nowhere to go.   

Trash-o-saurus, the resident dinosaur at the Garbage Museum on Honeyspot Road, is one such piece created by Pennsylvania artist Leo Sewell from 2000 pounds of, yes, your garbage – the average amount generated by one person, per year.

With feet  made from used tires and irons, teeth from old wooden tennis rackets, a body from used toys, automobile plates and other junk,   it stands proof  that one person’s garbage can be another person’s art.  

On April 30, on the day that Trash-o-saurus turns 'Sweet 16,' the Garbage Museum will celebrate with a first-of-its-kind party, and is inviting the public to enter a drawing for a child up to 12-years-old to win a free birthday party at the Museum.

Besides creating art from junk, there’s lots to celebrate and learn about at the Garbage Museum:  For example, how everyday items can be salvaged and turned into things that are useful, such as shopping bags and clothes; how trash can fuel innovation in a trash-to-energy plant that generates electricity; how to reduce the volume of throwaway food scraps, (excluding meat and fruit), in your garbage and landfill by composting using Nature’s best composter, the Red Wiggler worm.

“It is the most effective, least expensive fertilizer there is,” say Public Affairs Director Paul Nonnenmacher of the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA) (www.CRRA.org) that runs the museum.   “It has a multitude of purposes.”

The carpet at the museum is made from recycled plastic water and soda bottles.   Some of the building is made from recycled materials such as steel and aluminum.  On exhibit are park benches made from No. 2 plastic that is also used in playgrounds.

CRRA has been conducting educational workshops for schools and adults through its museum in Hartford and the Garbage Museum here in Stratford.

Jo Ann McCann, lead science teacher for K-6 for the Town of Stratford, sees the tremendous benefits of taking kids for a visit here.

“Kids get to see what happens after recyclables leave the blue bin.”   They can  observe the sorting process from a ‘sky-box’ at the Intermediate Processing Center in the connecting building where sorting will soon be automated.

They also see how trash that cannot be recycled is hauled off to the trash-to-energy plant in Bridgeport to generate electricity. The four Rs – reduce, recycle, re-use and re-think – become take-home lessons in responsible and sustainable living.

According to McCann, every third grade class has been visiting the Museum for the past four to five years.   “It aligns perfectly with State science frameworks,” she said. 

(http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/pdf/curriculum/science/PK8_sciencecurriculumstandards2009.pdf).

Ten- year- old Haniel Jeremy of East Haven, a 5^th grade student at Bridgeport’s Fairfield County SDA School (http://www.fairfieldcountysdaschool.org/) liked Trash-o-saurus.   He was being helped by Museum Educator Audrey Sciuto to research  his science project on recycling.   “I didn’t know about a lot of things that I learned from coming here,” said Haniel.

“We’re still researching the numbers, but since they began in 1993 the educational programs offered through the Garbage Museum have attracted more than 333,000 participants, and we have averaged better than 30,000 per year starting in 2006,” stated CRRA’s Nonnenmacher via email. Tours are booked a year in advance.

The Garbage Museum, which has been featured in publications around the world, has plans for an exhibit at Stratford Day (www.stratfordday.com).