Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 9, 1993 TAG: 9310090124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But her Franklin County second-graders showed her otherwise.
Fifty-two pupils from Bono's Dudley Elementary class crashed the new trash exhibit at the Science Museum of Western Virginia on Friday, touching, feeling and playing with anything they could get their hands on.
Which is exactly what they were supposed to do.
The exhibit is designed to teach youngsters all about garbage - what it is, where it comes from, where it goes and how it harms the environment. It also teaches them the four R's of the environmentally attuned 1990s - reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink.
It doesn't teach patience. The displays are just too tempting. Kids can pull open drawers that hide garbage, use bamboo poles and magnets to fish for metal fish in a pond, crawl through a simulated compost pile, plunk marbles through a pretend landfill and play the Trashbusters pinball game.
Nonetheless, a patient volunteer tour guide, Margaret Rhodes, led the children through the exhibit.
"Do you know why we recycle?" she asked.
"I know, but you don't get much money on the stuff," said future businessman Nicholas Reed.
"Yes," Rhodes conceded, "but it's also to help keep the Earth clean."
Over at the grocery display, Rhodes explained how to shop for items that contain less packaging and for other environmentally friendly products, such as light bulbs that last longer and use less energy.
Interesting, perhaps, but Mika Crump wanted to know one thing.
"Is this food real?" she asked, pointing to the fake boxes of cereal.
Next to the wrecked Mazda and Toyota, Rhodes told how car parts are recycled. Tires are shredded and used to pave roads, glass is recycled, and the metal is turned into different products, such as cat food tins.
Andrew DeFilippis thought for a minute, then asked, "Can you recycle a cat food can again?"
Yes, said a jubilant Rhodes, that's it, exactly.
"Garbage . . . and all that trash!" was created at the Sacramento Science Museum in California and is traveling the country. The Roanoke museum staff expanded on the original exhibit, adding hands-on displays.
The exhibit includes a simulated landfill that shows how rain drips through garbage to contaminate ground water and how a liner and collection system can stop that leachate, or "garbage juice," as Rhodes calls it.
The exhibit runs through March.
by CNB