The National Zoo and a Recycling Center

One rainy Saturday we drove over to the National Zoo in hopes of seeing their pandas. Unfortunately they mostly stayed out of sight (we did get to see one, but from further away than we had hoped) but we also got to bring along a favorite cousin so it all worked out.

That is a lot of poop.

The naked mole rat exhibit was our absolute favorite. There were so many of them, and they are so naked and tiny and blind. We hear there is a live feed online but we haven’t watched it yet. One of our family’s favorite books is Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems so it was really fun to see them for real!

This is us in front of the sun bear. We hear she recently had twins, who were hiding when we took this photo with their mama.

I’ve been wanting to see a recycling plant up close but there are so few who do tours in cities we are visiting, so when I found this one in Maryland I knew we had to go. Plus, then we could check Maryland off of our States We’ve Visited map. Well, the tour was fantastic and way more interesting than I thought it would be but Else was sick on the day we went so we can’t scratch MD off until all 8 of us have been there. I guess we’ll have to go back.

This is where the trucks dump all the trash.

It is then dumped on a conveyor belt and sent to these nice ladies who sift through it, pulling out garbage and separating out all of the recyclables onto several other conveyor belts that leave from this area, depending on what type of recyclable each item is. They work so fast! I can only imagine how badly their feet and backs hurt at the end of the day after standing hunched over all day. They’re also super friendly and kept waving up at the kids when they had a break.

This is further down the line where it’s mostly just cans and plastics. It’s incredible how much garbage this one plant goes through in just half an hour. I liked learning how different materials are recycled into new items. Not all plants take all materials. This one takes glass, which I guess isn’t very common, even though glass is one of the few recyclables that are very easily reused in its original form. We learned that a can or bottle of soda can be recycled, cleaned, formed into a new can or bottle and be back on the shelf full of soda in only 2-3 months.