This was one of the first field trips we've taken so far this year. A good friend set this up and invited us along. It was for a tour of the CWD (Community Waste Disposal - our city's garbage company)recycling center in Dallas. I had no idea what this tour would entail but I'm so glad we went!
We got all the kids together for a picture before we went inside - no small feat!!
We stopped for a potty break in the admin offices before we all entered the actual recycling plant.
Then we made our way into the very loud recycling center. This is the first thing we saw! Wow.
When we entered the plant we were split up into two groups (2 adults and 10 kids each). One group would tour the plant while the other had lunch and viewed the presentation put on by an employee of the City of Allen. This really surprised me. The City of Allen sent an employee down to Dallas to give this presentation to our small little group of kids. Her job is to go around and do this presentation about recycling at the schools. I just thought it was neat that they would send her down to Dallas for us too!
The Lofgren's and us were in one group so we went to the presentation first. The kids had a no waste pizza lunch. The napkins and paper plates we used were composted and the water bottles were recycled. The pizza, of course, was eaten and the pizza boxes were also composted. The presentation was very informative and my kids totally loved it and learned from it. They are so into recycling now and are always looking at the bottom of bottles or packages to see if it has the right numbers on it so we can recycle it.
After the presentation we switched spots and went on the tour of the plant.
This was going on right outside the room we were eating in. Workers were separating the different recyclables to go to the different parts of the plant.
We walked over to a different part of the plant.
This is the area where the trucks come and dump their load.
We climbed up a lot of stairs! 
The entire place was an amalgam of conveyor belts, machinery, stairs, and contraptions. So interesting and SO loud!
While we were up on one of the platforms and truck came in to dump its load.
Then a front loader comes and picks up a load to process.
We were stylin' in our safety glasses. Sawyer was pretty freakin' cute in them!
After seeing the "dumping and processing area" we went back to the building we started in and saw some of the "bundling" process.
There were aisles of the different sorted recyclables. 
Translucent plastic bottles:
Opaque plastic bottles:
Aluminum cans:
We watched this baling machine for quite a while waiting for it to spit out another bale of cardboard.
This cutie-pie begged me to take her picture. Who could resist that sweet little face? 
A few pictures on our way out:
Now, go recycle!!
1 comment:
Now out kids are experts and tell me what I can and can't recycle. Gone are the days I using the recycle bin as a second garbage can...
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