Posted: Aug 22, 07 2:16pm

A friend and professional colleague of mine is a member of the AIGA, a professional design association. He told me about a recent AIGA-sponsored event he attended that he could not endorse more strongly: a tour of our city dump facilities (here in San Francisco: http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/sfdump.htm ).

Besides being both an eye-opener and nose-opener, he highly recommended it because -- eventhough he considers himself environmentally conscious -- he discovered how sadly uninformed he was about his/our impact on the environment. We can all make guesses about how our daily choices impact the world, but it's another step to really see what we are largely 'protected' from seeing.

(As a designer, he says it challenged him to think more about how to reduce our footprint through product design choices, etc.)

So check with your local dump to see if they offer tours. As foul as it might sound, it may be very educational for you ... and your children. Odd as it may sound, I too am curious to check it out.