Discoveries made on field trip to dump

It was my daughter’s 6th birthday. Finally freed from the cruel injustice of sitting in a booster seat, she was begging to hit the road.

The destination was not as important as the journey itself, so we decided to take in the recycling, grab a mocha and pick up a cheesecake. The day had promise.

Once at the recycling center, she helped me sort through bags of assorted bottles and cans. She meticulously removed lids from plastic bottles and separated glass, aluminum and plastic into their designated bins.

We took our $10 bounty and headed to the restroom to wash up. On the way out, we stopped to look at bales of crushed cans as she wondered aloud what anyone could do with so many cans.

More than a year went by before I got up the nerve to call Jackie Sillman at Yuba-Sutter Disposal Inc. I thought she might find my request a bit odd, but she said she enjoys guiding around 1,000 kids through the facility each year. She invited us to come on out. We set up a field trip to go see what goes on at the dump, and we invited a bunch of homeschooling friends.

By now, most of our friends think we are a little bit conked in the head. This was the clincher. Now they know it. We only had one family decide to come along with us, and I suspect it is because they are new in town.

We arrived at the appointed time and learned that we were not visiting the dump. We were visiting the transfer station. For years, I’ve been giving directions to my house that include the phrase, “go out of town, past the dump.” Transfer station sounds a little classier, so you can bet I’ll use that term from now on.

We all donned bright vests and took off on a walking tour. The grounds were remarkably clean, considering all that goes on there. We got to see old trash toters being baled up to be recycled, trucks coming and going and some of the sorting that goes on to separate recyclables from other trash that goes out of the facility and to the landfill.

The kids learned a lot about recycling that day, and they’ve been keeping an eye on us to remind us to do our part. One change we made as a family was to reduce the number of plastic bags we use. Brian switched to paper on his weekly grocery trip, and the kids estimated that we’ll easily avoid using more than 600 plastic bags in a year just by making that switch. We always thought it was better to use plastic and then reuse them, but it turns out that paper is better.

Now we’re trying to accumulate a stash of reusable cloth bags to use for some of our other shopping trips. A Web search led to several plastic-bag crafts we are using to turn some of our plastic-bag stash into durable, reusable totes - good projects for rainy fall days.

As we stood on the truck scale, we added another bit of math into the trip. The kids calculated that our combined weight was just under a half ton. The adults jumped off before they could start figuring further.

Our trip ended with a box of loot. Jackie handed out a couple of games of Waste Bingo and some mini recycling toters.

Back at the house, we washed up and I made a snack for all. I was going to make dump cake, but after learning the proper terminology, I couldn’t figure out how to make transfer station cake. We settled on cupcakes.

Rose Godfrey is a speech pathologist and homeschooling mom in Hallwood.