The Transfer Station

Last week our AP environmental sciences took a field trip to the Andover transfer station. The station is small but then again so is Andover. The station was made up of numerous buildings, compartments and dirt roads. The first part of the station we visited was a small building with two men inside. One of the men’s job is watch out for trash that’s not supposed to be in the compactor and he does this through a window on the inside of the building. After introducing ourselves, the two men started talking about the transfer station. The transfer station handles aluminum, cardboard, paper, plastic, and glass. The sorting of these materials occurs in different containers in which trash can simply be throne into. After this some of the materials can be compacted. The men talk about how materials compact differently. One of the men says “towards the end, it is very hard to compact the plastic” and Alan notes that this is because plastic retains its shape. Since there is no value in compacting glass the men explain how they send it New London where it is used in road base. After this Alan brought up something we talked about in class, China and the price drop on paper. The men talk about how this isn’t necessarily an issue because the markets might improve before they can even afford to ship it. The next thing the men talked about was incineration as means to get rid of trash. The only thing they are aloud to burn is pallets and trees. This is because burning anything else may result in toxic chemicals polluting the area. E-waste is also another source of toxic chemicals, this is why electronics must be processed before their parts can be reused. This concluded our conversation and our group moved on to see the rest of the facility.

I personally enjoyed the field trip to the transfer station. The workers were very friendly and I could tell they enjoyed talking about their jobs to us. My biggest takeaway from the trip was how difficult it seemed to manage the waist and to avoid trash build up. Another thing that I thought about after the trip was how different my transfer station from home was. I feel the main difference in my transfer station is that since my town is more populated it needs more means to process trash. I really enjoyed this trip and it has definitely educated me on just how much trash the human race makes.