• Overview
• CRRA Trash Museum in Hartford
• Garbage Museum in Stratford

OVERVIEW

CRRA has two award-winning museums:

• CRRA Trash Museum in Hartford
• Garbage Museum in Stratford

Each museum offers unique exhibits and programs on the many challenges and solutions of waste management. Each museum has a viewing area where visitors can observe the working regional recycling center. In 2006, more than 50,000 people of all ages visited the museums.

The general public can visit without appointment during the public hours. Educator-led group tours are available through pre-registration. Loan Kits, books, and videos are also available to borrow.  In order to close the recycling loop, CRRA operates a gift shop at both museums featuring items made with recycled or reused content.

Admission is free and there is handicapped access.

CRRA TRASH MUSEUM IN HARTFORD

Visitors to the CRRA Trash Museum, located at 211 Murphy Road, Hartford, may tour the 6,500 square feet of educational exhibits beginning at the Temple of Trash. Learn about the problems of old-fashioned methods of disposal, such as the “town dump”.  From problems, the tour moves to solutions, including explanations of source reduction, recycling, resource recovery and landfills. During the tour, there is an opportunity to watch the Container Processing Facility in operation. From the mezzanine viewing area, visitors can follow bottles, cans, plastic containers, paper and cardboard from the tipping floor, through CRRA's new state-of-the-art processing equipment and see them crushed or baled. Prepared recyclables are then shipped to markets and made into new products. Back in the museum, a mural by Higganum artist Ted Esselstyn depicts the history of trash management from pre-historic times to today.

GARBAGE MUSEUM IN STRATFORD

The Garbage Museum, located at 1410 Honeyspot Road Extension, Stratford, offers visitors an opportunity to meet Trash-o-saurus, a dinosaur made from a ton of trash, which is how much trash an average person throws away in a year! Guests may walk through a giant compost pile, meet resident compost worms and discover how much energy savings is derived from recycling. Watch what happens to recyclables in a “sky-box” view of the tipping and sorting process. From the mezzanine walkway, visitors can follow glass and plastic containers, cans and newspapers through the sorting process and on to the end of the line where items are crushed and baled for shipping to processors, who turn them into products.

Children learn the value of reusing things as they play I-Spy around Trash-o-saurus at the Garbage Museum. Trash-o-saurus is made from one ton of trash.