The Garbage Museum in Stratford

It’s not as stinky as you might think.  Actually, the name is a bit of a misnomer in my opinion.  The Garbage Museum in Stratford is really the recycling museum, I think.  You know, reduce, reuse, recycle.  That’s the kind of garbage you’ll find there.

The Garbage Museum is just a couple turns off of I-95 and tucked among what looks like the industrial side of town.  Inside, it’s colorful, intriguing, and cozy (code for small).  The Trashosaurus instantly grabs your attention and draws you in once you realize what it’s made of.  Look for their I Spy cheat sheet and spend a while poking around with the kids.  A few other exhibits are sprinkled along the perimeter of the museum but what’s really worth seeing is upstairs.

Upstairs is a corridor with wide windows that look out onto the regional recycling center – an actual, working recycling center – with piles of paper, glass and plastic, hefty frontloaders, real recycling trucks pulling in and out, conveyer belts moving to and fro and real life workers.  Grab the simple guide outside the door for a self-guided tour of how our “garbage” gets recycled.  Even for a three year old, this was a fascinating vista!  More, M was way more into the process than I expected.  We both watched the plastic and glass get pushed by the huge front loader, disappear into a hole in the ground, and magically appear creeping up the conveyer belt before being sorted by more machines and green-smocked workers.  I’m not claiming M understood exactly what was happening, but her curiousity was piqued and the questions never stopped.  Not to mention, I learned a ton about what happens to our recycled materials after the big white truck picks it up outside our house on Thursdays.

The Garbage Museum is worth a visit, not just because the entry fee is dirt cheap, but because I think we all need occasional reminders to think twice about what we put in the garbage can.  Recycling matters, especially when you visualize how much waste is given a second life at this regional recycling center.  If for nothing else, The Garbage Museum is a great little place for kids to begin to understand that all garbage is not created equal.

the essentials:

Stratford, 1410 Honeyspot Road Extention, #203-381-9571

Open W-Fri 10am-4pm (open Tuesdays in the Summer)

Admission is $2 for adults, FREE for children 3 and under

a few facts about recycling taken from The Garbage Museum

• The aluminum can is 100 percent recyclable and can be used to make new beverage cans indefinitely.
• Glass can be recycled and reused an infinite number of times.
• Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12-foot wall from New York to California.
• Every Sunday 500,000 trees could be saved if everyone recycled their newspapers.
• We use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas every year.
• If we recycled every plastic bottle we used, we would keep two billion tons of plastic out of the trash.