Best Trashy Education

It should be a requirement of municipal citizenship to visit the Los Reales Landfill at least once, to give everyone a healthy respect for what happens to trash after it gets picked up by your friendly neighborhood sanitation worker. Everyday, 1,500 tons of solid waste are dumped into the landfill, and then smashed and packed down by giant tractors. If you didn't know the landfill existed, that's probably because it doesn't smell, nor does it let trash escape into the wind. Take a tour of the landfill (call 791-5414 to set one up), and you'll learn how the city of Tucson recycles things, and meets all local, state and federal regulations. You can drop off hazardous-waste stuff here (like computers, paint, toxic batteries, etc.) and watch the tractors do their thing against the clear blue sky. And then maybe the next time you start to throw away something you could recycle or reuse, you'll picture it getting squashed into the mountains of the Los Reales Landfill, and think again.