Travel down the path to sustainability and uncover how our consumption affects the environment in the Dane County Trash Lab exhibit at the 2026 Garden & Green Living Expo.

Before hosting this annual fundraiser Feb. 13-15, 2026, at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, PBS Wisconsin caught up with Dane County Department of Waste + Renewables deputy director Roxanne Wienkes to learn how the Dane County Trash Lab mobile unit builds awareness and inspires action. 

Photos courtesy of Dane County Waste + Renewables.

PBS Wisconsin: Why should Garden & Green Living Expo attendees make their way to the Dane County Trash Lab mobile unit?

Roxanne Wienkes: There’s something for everyone. It’s a whole museum, designed and built by the Madison Children’s Museum, squeezed into a trailer. Immediately when you enter, it is evident that there’s so much content to go see. You could spend hours in the exhibit if you read every word and completed each activity. 

 We set up a path through three sections that we envision people taking when visitors enter the Trash Lab. At the first station, we’re trying to show visitors what impact their trash has on the environment. We want to accomplish three things:
1. Build awareness of our consumption and how it impacts the environment.
2. Show visitors what we do with our waste in Dane County.
3. Inspire people to take action to make a change.

PBS Wisconsin: How does the Dane County Trash Lab increase awareness and inspire people to change their relationship with waste and sustainability?

Wienkes: The Dane County Trash Lab features statistics about how much trash people make on a daily basis. It has images of what trash that isn’t managed in an appropriate way does in developing countries. We’re really trying to show people that even small changes can make a really big difference and motivate them to make a change.

There are many inspirational tidbits listed in the Trash Lab, like the fact that over 90% of the materials exhibited in the Trash Lab were upcycled. But just seeing the beauty of the displayed trash is an inspiration to do something a little bit better.

PBS Wisconsin: What other Department of Waste + Renewables Services will visitors learn about in the Dane County Trash Lab?

Wienkes: There is a section that is really an ode to what we do at the Dane County Department of Waste + Renewables. It has a diorama that offers a look into the physical cross sections of a landfill. It also has light-up paths to show how liquids and gases and everything else move through a landfill. It even includes details like showing how we’ve planted native pollinator plants on top of the landfill. The Madison Children’s Museum took such care to make sure that even the native prairie on top of the landfill was accurately depicted in the diorama. 

We also take users through what happens at our renewable natural gas plant. It is an amazing exhibit of a really technical process. It shows people how the facility cleans up the gas and injects it into the natural gas pipeline.

PBS Wisconsin: What inspired the development of the Trash Lab?

Wienkes: We host tours at our facility, which is really impactful for people to be able to physically see what a landfill looks like and what their trash is doing to the landscape. Outreach coordinator Hanna Kohn hosts dozens of events throughout any given month. 

That’s why we developed the Trash Lab as a mobile exhibit. We were successfully giving tours to hundreds of people on an annual basis, so we knew there was interest. The Trash Lab took [the Dane County Department of Waste + Renewables] from about one thousand to nearly 10,000 interactions per year with our Dane County community members.

PBS Wisconsin: What are the most eye-catching parts of the display?

Wienkes: The coolest thing is when people come in [to the Trash Lab] and see the ceiling covered in a rainbow of items that our team pulled from the trash for display. They look up at the ceiling and say, ‘Oh my gosh! I had one of those when I was a kid.’ Or ‘Oh my gosh! I just threw one of those out last week.’ The funniest little moments are when people look up at the ceiling and see all of the stuff they recognize, or a toy they once had as a kid.

PBS Wisconsin: What other stations in the Trash Lab inspire visitors?

Wienkes: There’s a screen where you can watch informational videos about the landfill. It’s like a virtual tour of the landfill that has a really popular video on it. We get all sorts of things at the landfill, things you wouldn’t really imagine, things like campers and boats. And one of the favorites for young girls and boys, but primarily boys, is to watch the video of the heavy equipment at the landfill crushing the big things.

PBS Wisconsin: Other than the Trash Lab exhibit, how else will the Dane County Department of Waste + Renewables be involved in the 2026 Garden & Green Living Expo?

Wienkes: We’re providing services for management of the food scraps [at the Alliant Energy Center]. You’ll see bins out amongst the [Garden & Green Living] expo hall to collect the food scraps. Our staff will pick them up and they’ll go to our compost partner, Purple Cow Organics, located near the landfill where they’ll be composted, instead of put into the landfill.

Garden & Green Living Expo tickets make great holiday gifts and can be purchased now at a discounted advance rate through Feb. 12 at wigardenexpo.com.