These kids get it -- do you?

Check out this video made by children at Mary M. Hooker Environmental Sciences Magnet School in Hartford:

Our Museums' record summer

Green is hot. And it’s cooler than ever. At least in Connecticut.

This summer, more people visited the CRRA Trash Museum in Hartford and Garbage Museum in Stratford, and more people took part in their award-winning sustainability education programs, than in any other summer on record.


The table you see here tells the story. In July and August, almost 9,000 people turned to our Museums to learn about recycling, energy conservation, composting and other hot green topics. Over 3,100 people visited the Garbage Museum in the summer vacation months.

Year-to-date, we’re not far off the pace we set in 2008, when both Museums enjoyed record numbers.

We’re proud of our education programs, proud of our educators and confident that our efforts are making a difference in our environment.

By the way, have you become a fan of the Trash Museum or the Garbage Museum on Facebook?

In case you're planning ahead for 2009 . . .

Earth Day is being celebrated all over Connecticut and around the country on April 22. Schools and environmental groups are preparing events to draw attention to improvements made in our environment and, more importantly, what all of us can do to keep that momentum going. More recently, businesses have been holding Earth Day celebrations for their employees.

One easy thing that everyone can do to help the environment is to recycle. And because CRRA is the state's leader in recycling education, we provide exhibits and educational programs for Earth Day events.

Unfortunately, in the last couple of weeks we've had to turn down many invitations to participate in events on Tuesday. We want to serve as many people as we can, and we offer these outreach programs year-round -- not just on Earth Day -- so if your school or business would like us to come to you with a fun, educational program on how we can all take better care of our Earth, please call us at (860) 757-7700 or e-mail crrainfo[at]crra.org and put "Outreach" in the subject line.

Happy Earth Day!

News and notes

We've always thought the Garbage Museum in Stratford was a pretty cool place. Now the Boston Globe says so, too! In Sunday's Globe there was a huge spread, taking up most of two pages, about the museum. You can see an on-line photo gallery here, and read the story here.

Have you been to the Garbage Museum? What did you think?

By the way, we'll be talking trash and recycling Wednesday morning on Hot 93.7! Make sure to tune in at about 7:15 a.m. and check us out with DJ Buck, Nancy B and Marv-Lo.

More praise for our education staff

Joan writes:

We visited the CRRA Garbage Museum on Wednesday, January 2nd. We had about 55 children and adults attend. All of the children are in kindergarten, and many of them have a variety of special needs. The staff at the museum was ready and waiting for us when we arrived. My group of six children, who all have low attention levels, in addition to the already low attention level of a typical five year old!, had the most wonderful time. Our guide and teacher, Robin, was able to read the attention levels of my class wonderfully! She knew when she had their interest and could continue, and when it was time to move on! My class especially loved watching the payloader go back and forth under the "bridge" we were standing on and watching the activity below in the recycling area. They also enjoyed seeing the worms in the compost pile and the movie at the end.

In speaking with the other teachers and students who attended, we all agreed that it was a trip worthwhile, educational, and a "must do again" next year! One of the classes even created their own "Trash-a-saurus" on the bulletin board outside of their class!

Thanks for a wonderful and fun-learning morning!

By the way, we usually don't like to scoop ourselves, but in the next few days we'll be announcing that for the second consecutive year, participation in our educational programs set a new record, jumping more than 7 percent to over 53,000. Now we're looking for a "three-peat" in 2008!

Educational programs for businesses?

Jenny wrote:

“Are there programs at either the Hartford or Stratford museums targeted at teaching business people about waste reduction and diversion?”

Good question. Each year the Trash Museum in Hartford and the Garbage Museum in Stratford teach more than 50,000 people – mostly school-age children – the five R’s of solid waste, namely “reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and rethink.” We don’t have any programs specifically for business people, but if your company is interested we could certainly modify one of our existing programs to work with an adult audience.

To find out more, call Sotoria Montanari, our education supervisor, at (860) 757-7764.

And if there's something you'd like to know or have an idea for CRRA, send an e-mail to crrainfo(at)crra.org -- just make sure you put the word "CRRABlog" in your subject line.

Teaching kids who teach the world

There's a terrific story in this morning's New Haven Register about six-year-old Cole Johnson of East Haven who, according to the story, was "bitten by the recycling bug during a visit to the Children’s Garbage Museum adjacent to the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority’s recycling facility in Stratford."

Now he's trying to get his school to expand its recycling program. Way to go, Cole!

Each year CRRA's education centers teach more than 50,000 people how to protect their environment with recycling and environmentally responsible waste disposal. We've always believed that if we teach children about recycling, they'll go and teach the grownups, and here's more evidence of that.

New attraction at the Trash Museum

There’s a new attraction at the Trash Museum in Hartford that gives visitors an up-close look at CRRA’s state-of-the-art recycling processing center.

Nine closed-circuit television cameras feed video of various stages of the recycling processes to large monitors installed in the viewing area overlooking the processing center.

The new closed-circuit system was installed after the installation of new recycling equipment in the processing facility. Previously, visitors could clearly see the processes from the viewing area, but the new processing equipment doesn’t allow the same sight lines.

On a split-screen monitor, viewers can see the action of the recycling processing from each of the nine cameras. Conveyor belts, plastic optic sorting, paper screeners and bales of each commodity are examples of the new sorting technology. Additionally, there is on-going truck traffic where recyclables are dumped onto the tipping floor and then pushed onto a conveyor belt by a payloader.

The new camera exhibit offers a variety of features that enhance the educational experience of the groups. Educators leading tours can toggle through the images and zoom camera views in and out as on-lookers learn about the sorting process. A larger image may be projected onto the adjacent wall so that the process may be further explained. Placed over the mock bales in the museum are monitors displaying the sorting process of that particular commodity.

The Trash Museum is located at 211 Murphy Road in Hartford’s South Meadows. For contact information, directions and hours of operation, click on this link:
http://www.crra.org/pages/edu_contact_htfd.htm