All That Trash is a solid, fun, educational children’s book

Waste. Rubbish. An entertaining book about trash, much less a children’s illustrated book about the subject; without being preachy is an almost impossible task. All That Trash by Meghan McCarthy is about a trash barge and a business plan that started with earnest intentions; but wound up drifting for months while politicians, the media and the public debated the fate of 3,186 tons of garbage from New York.

The year is 1987 and why didn’t garbage from New York simply stay in that area is due to a businessman in Alabama who had a novel and forward thinking idea. Lowell Harrelson owned National Waste Contractors in Alabama and heard about a landfill in New York that was about to run out of space. His idea was to purchase the garbage, put it on a barge (called the Mabro 4000) and then ship it to North Carolina. There the garbage would be buried in a landfill and then have the methane gas that the decomposing garbage collected. The gas would then be converted through a generator into electricity that could be used anywhere along the power grid.

Methane gas, just like the stuff that cows produce is bad in any form and not a good thing for the environment. What Harrelson was proposing is now commonly referred to as LFG, or landfill gas. Companies near you are most likely collecting it at a landfill right now and you’re unaware of it.

However, back in the big hair, Back to the Future day it was a new concept. It when a news helicopter saw the Mabro 4000 off of the North Carolina coast it raised alarms. Within no time the locals were outraged, the NIBYs (Not In M BackYard) started their thing and the state ordered that the garbage could not be accepted. Harrelson tried to take the barge to Alabama, but that state also said that he couldn’t unload it there.

The state of Louisiana hand-delivered him a letter stating that garbage couldn’t park there. They also had a boat escort the barge out of their waters. The Mobro 4000 drifted, with its two person crew, in the Gulf of Mexico for a bit, looking for a home.

A business man in the Bahamas had the novel idea of dumping the garbage near his property to build up his area. Ironically, this idea, what we’d now call reclaimed land is now used in the middle east and parts of Asia. Unfortunately for the Bahamas business man they did not approve the idea and the garbage kept on moving.

This story is fascinating and McCarthy does a great job of keeping the over arching problem of garbage front and center, while keeping the absurdity and pop culture curiosity about was going on regarding the barge. With all of this in place, it’s also a great book for kids through fourth grade to read by themselves. Readers as young as 4 will enjoy the art and story of the wayward garbage barge. The fate of the garbage is presented in a STEM manner initially and then as a destination issue where the people are trying to find a place for it.

All That Trash is littered with great illustrations that track the barge through the open waters, its garbage content and the people behind the scenes that impacted its course in some way. The final three pages of the book is a glossary of sorts with bullet points about the barge and lots of facts about garbage. Much like the book, these facts aren’t accusatory, they simply present what’s happening, offer unique twists on those facts, as well as anecdotes.