By Kathleen Seiler Neary
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, August 1, 2008

Explaining that giant garbage trucks take your trash to the dump: not so hard. Explaining what happens to cans and bottles once they're hauled away from the curb: better to show while you tell.

The Montgomery County Recycling Center, which routinely gives guided tours to school groups, is also open to the public for free drop-in visits, making it an easy outing with kids.

Pulling into the grounds of the solid waste transfer station and recycling center just north of Rockville is exciting in itself. Dump trucks, garbage trucks and pickup trucks are everywhere. Once inside the building (if you visit on a Monday or a Friday, when no group tours are given), you'll probably have the run of the place. Plan to spend about a half-hour checking out the center.

There's no mistaking that this place handles garbage. The same sour scent that lingers in the air after trucks pick up your trash lingers here. Although it's a recycling center, more non-recyclable garbage than even Oscar the Grouch could handle makes its way into people's recycling bins.

But the longer you're inside, the less you notice it.

The center, designed with visitors in mind, has two sections to visit: an exhibit room and the processing area. Spending a little time looking at the displays will prep kids for the noisy conveyor-belt maze they will soon see. Towers filled with paper, leaves, metals, glass and plastics at various stages in the recycling process immediately caught my almost-3-year-old son's eye, but getting his hands on samples of repurposed materials pleased him even more. I don't know whether he believed me when I told him that the fuzzy fleece he was feeling came from recycled soda bottles, but he latched onto the explanation that some plastics are recycled to make new toys. Elementary-school-age kids will get the most out of a visit and better grasp the concept of caring for our planet. "We hope visitors gain an appreciation for the fact that recycling does work and the materials residents put in their blue bins are brought here to be made into commodities to sell to vendors to use to make products," says Tom Kusterer, recycling center manager.

After glancing at a compost bin sample and a sign showing the sections of the processing area, we were ready for the main attraction. We popped in free earplugs and headed upstairs to the viewing platform. Walking into a room of clanking bottles and metals is overwhelming. My son's first reaction was: "I want to get out of here." But once he focused on the workers in hard hats, goggles and aprons who smiled and waved from down below, he was all questions (many of which were muffled by the noise).

In this building, glass, metal and plastic are processed (mixed paper is at another plant), but a host of junk -- "Look, a shoe!" my son marveled at one point -- makes its way here and has to be removed in the sorting process.

Forklifts on the move, massive amounts of containers being recycled and an overhead view that makes munchkins feel like giants -- it all adds up to an outing that my son would like to do again, and I'm all for recycling that idea.

Drop-In Visits at the Montgomery County Recycling Center 16105 Frederick Rd., Derwood When: Open Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. It's best to visit before 3 p.m., when they shut down the machinery and stop processing. Workers take breaks from 9 to 9:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m. to noon and 2 to 2:15 p.m. Info:301-417-1433. http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/swstmpl.asp?url=/Content/DPWT/solidwaste/facilities/recyclingcenter_visit.asp. Cost: Free.