Trash & Waterfalls

Our weekends are always so bipolar.

So on Saturday, we saw a lot of trash. We went to METRO’s Waste Transfer Station early in the morning for our second to last volunteer project (!). We took a bus to get there but then would have to walk another mile before we reached the actual site. That mile went through industrial wasteland so we held our noses and played logic games (There’s a guy in a room with 53 bicycles. He’s dead. How?), commenting on this “other” part of Portland that reminded us of New Jersey (sigh) with its expanses of barbed wire, glass strewn all over the sidewalk, and bleak factories and warehouses as far as the eye could see.

We were given a tour of the entire building and also of the hazardous waste area. Let’s just say the smell was really intense. But we also learned a lot of cool things – about how people will come to their facilities, weigh their car, dump all their trash, weigh their car on the way out, pay, and repeat, often. Also that a lot of people (me including) definitely don’t know how to separate their hazardous materials, but there are kind people at the Waste Transfer Station who do know how to. They also donate unopened or barely used products to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Golden Harvesters (low-income families can pay about $5/month to pick up a box of various products like cleaning supplies and paint).

The Waste Station also really tries to recycle and reuse as much as possible. They actually go through the trash and then are able to recycle about 90% of all the cardboard and paper they find. They also had these different sections where they piled plastic, glass, nature’s debris, etc. It was all really organized and pretty neat.

One of us asked an interesting question about if the Waste Station ever tries to start any programs to educate the people on how to separate their own trash (recycling, hazardous, nonhazardous, etc) so that the Waste Station doesn’t have to separate it all. Our tour guide had a very reluctant, helpless look on his face as he described how people would just come there, drop off all their stuff in one big pile, have the workers walk over and explain to them how they could put certain metals in certain areas and other materials in another place and how doing some of those things could save them a lot of money, and then have those people ignore them completely. You can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do, to do something they’re not required by law to do, was his gist.

The rest of the day, we all split off. Emily and I went to the Saturday Market and did some very productive gift shopping and then we met up with Mark, Polly, and Kellyn at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry)! It was fun and kind of small but I have high standards from science museums on the East Coast that serve much larger populations than OMSI does. The brain teasers were awesome though. We’re still pondering some of them to this day.

For dinner, we checked out Portobello, an entirely vegan Italian restaurant right next to Kellyn’s house. It was DELICIOUS. OMG. Service was a little spotty but the food was incroyable. I had spicy potato gnocchi and a caramelized onion and mushroom tart. The place wasn’t terribly pricey either. My entire bill was $14 + tip and I was pretty satisfied. The food wasn’t too heavy either like most Italian dishes but definitely fulfilling. I’m not a big fan of cheese either so it was perfect! Coming to Portland, I’ve also come to realize that I completely take for granted NJ’s surfeit of Italian restaurants. I miss Carlucci’s Grill…

PART 1/2

Ting-Ting

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