Landfills are amazing. And a problem.

Today, we spent the second half of the day immersed, mostly figuratively, in garbage. Susan Waite, Recycling Coordinator for the city of Northampton joined us at lunch. She was very impressed, both by the children's knowledge about recycling, and by their low-trash lunches. So, give yourselves a collective pat on the back.

Susan told us a little bit about what to expect at the first stop on our field trip - the transfer station on Locust street. (It's so busy there that we were not permitted to get out of the car.) We saw cars and Pedal People delivering garbage, recycling, and compost, and saw someone browsing the free book shed. We even found a book to take back to our classroom.

We learned that the city collects compost, and that this compost differs from our backyard/farm compost - it gets a lot hotter and consequently they can accept many items that we don't compost at school (or at least not yet.) We'll learn more about this later in the week as we look at ways to reduce how much trash our school sends to the landfill.

The landfill in Northampton is capped - and no longer accepts garbage, which means that it resembles a big hill more than it resembles a giant pile of trash. We had the opportunity to drive up and over the hill, which was pretty cool.

We also saw collections of a variety large trash items, most of which are diverted from the landfill.

We also visited the Reuse Swap Shop, which is closed for the winter. There were a few odds and ends to give away, and since our students are experts at turning junk into treasure, they each left with a small item.

Of course, as exciting as the landfill can be, the fact that Northampton has had to cap its own landfill is a reminder that we are using up more and more of our open space with garbage. And even though Northampton does a great job recycling, recycling uses a lot of energy and resources. We'll spend the second half of our unit focusing on reducing and reusing - much better solutions to our trash problem.