The Trash Museum: A Monument to Wastefullness

Bike tourists on a drizzly day outside the 'Garbage Museum' in Teusaquillo.

'Cosmic suicide will awaken us from lethargy.' Thoreau.

Talk about turning a vice into a virtue. The resident of a house on a quiet corner in Teusaquillo evidently liked collecting discarded stuff - but not cleaning up. Over the years, his house and yard filled with the results of his habit, turning the lot into something like a city dump, to the great delight, undoubtedly, of his neighbors.

When you've made a mess of things, it's good to paint it as a matter of principle. Thus, the trash museum has signs pointing out how wasteful and resource-greedy humans are. 'Did some of these objects come from your house?' asks one sign. Another advises 'Think before you buy,' and a third warns of cosmic collapse. He's also got a sophisticated website.

The trash museum, if that's what it is, makes an important point about humanity's wastefullness. And particularly in a city which does little recycling, and, more importantly, makes no effort to reduce the amount of waste produced, in the first place.

A discarded doll inside the house.

The trash museum's trashy entranceway.

'We are the garbage culture.'

N ice flowers!

'Think before you buy.'

'What are you doing?'

The front of the garbage museum, on a corner in Teusaquillo.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours