WEATHERFORD —
Windy conditions were probably an advantage Thursday afternoon as the odd odor hit the bus load of students in store to see the 800 to 1,000 pounds of trash delivered daily to the landfill.
Third grade students from Brock Elementary went on the school’s second annual field trip to the IESI Weatherford Landfill. Arriving at 11:30, students ate lunch and received temporary tattoos displaying, “LOVE Where you live! Make every day Earth Day, recycle!” courtesy of the Weatherford Landfill.
After the “tattoo artists” completed their jobs, the students gathered around Karen Stephens, from IESI, to learn how the landfill works and view aerial photographs of the landfill. All students received a blue grocery bag, courtesy of Walmart, filled with a bright green T-shirt, pencils, brochures about the landfill and a book mark containing a packet of seeds for students to grow at their leisure.
With their attention spans starting to wane just a bit, the students were herded like cattle up a steep hill to the location of the methane gas wells. As soon as they were told garbage was buried underneath, several students immediately began kicking and digging at the ground with their shoes, perhaps in hopes of finding buried “treasure,” while an immediate “eww” was heard by the majority of kids.
Walking across the flat hill, passing the underground pipes dispelling the methane gas, students were allowed to carefully make their way down the hill to get a close up view of some of the machinery that is used through-out the landfill. Employees assisted by lifting students up into the cabs of the tractors, who responded in amazement at the size of the tractors’ steering wheels.
Once everyone had their chance to sit in the seats of the machines, they were carted off by their bus to tour the rest of the landfill, standing and craning their necks to see dump trucks full of trash empty their loads. During the ride, the students were given a juice boxes, which were collected and then thrown into the pile of trash being compacted by one of the tractors they had just visited.
“It’s getting smashed to smithereens,” “there’s a couch,” “hey, that’s my trash,” “there’s my mattress,” “Awesome!” were some of the comments heard throughout the bus as they leaned toward the windows watching the tractor at work. As if being in a compact stadium filled with fans, the bus seemed to get smaller as the voices got louder, yelling to the driver of the tractor, “Crush it, crush it!”
At the end of the winding and bumpy road back to the entrance of the landfill, the students gathered around the office, watching as garbage trucks were weighing in their loads.
Prior to leaving for the top of the hill, they had a contest to see who could guess the weight of all the boys and all the girls. Megan Perry estimated all the boys combined weighed 2,200 pounds and was deemed the winner, with the actual weight being 2,220. Riley Herron guessed the girls weighed 2,000 pounds and was only off by 600 pounds. Both students received a special prize for their closest guess.
At the end of the tour, all the students enthusiastically yelled, “Thank you!” as they made their way back to the bus that would take them home to share their exciting day at the landfill with family and friends.
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