Do You Dump Your Trash Over Board?

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

We currently cruise in restricted water (Great Lakes), so nothing except organics goes overboard. Offshore I would never consider tossing plastic, and while glass seems OK, it's not something I want on my boat anyway. Tossing tin or aluminum cans seems reasonable, but in an anaerobic environment, how quickly will it oxidize? Oxygen concentrations diminish in deep water. Will a can rust quickly if it sinks deeply? I honestly don't know. Perhaps one of you do. I do know this is why deep water wrecks are often the best preserved.

I get the valid question about where does all the land crap go. In too many places there are inadequate landfill and recycling services. Clearly in an undeveloped country, garbage is simply piled up or off-loaded to the environment somewhere. But I would guess that the vast majority of us on CF are short-term coastal cruisers, sailing around in developed countries. In these cases, there really is no excuse NOT to carry your inorganic garbage back to a proper disposal site. Obviously the boat has space for the cans and jars since we carried it out there to begin with.

Crush it, bag it, and deal with it responsibly. Seems only reasonable.

This is my point and a view point/mentality/quality of sailor that I can respect.

A person that looks at the big picture and makes decisions with or without regulations.
...a person that uses their brain instead of their mouth all the time.

Some old timers were doing this and thinking environment long before it became just another American "buzzword" joke....just blindly folloing the mainstream media comedy.

If you truly live with the land and study it closely...you have a pretty good idea of what being in harmony with it is all about.

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

... Tossing tin or aluminum cans seems reasonable, but in an anaerobic environment, how quickly will it oxidize? Oxygen concentrations diminish in deep water. Will a can rust quickly if it sinks deeply? I honestly don't know. Perhaps one of you do. I do know this is why deep water wrecks are often the best preserved.

(assuming we are cruising where recycling is not available)

My question is, what harm does a wreck do, or a can/bottle that does not decompose? Though an eyesore to a human, it is only habitable ruble to the fish. In 70s there was all this talk about litter, but most of it was relatively harmless junk. The concern should be only for what can leach out.

INtersting to read this study of a new landfill in Fiji; page 13 summarizes flows and later they talk about leachate composition. It becomes clear that food waste it is the major part of the problem. Subtract that (sailors don't waste) and other catagories that sailors don't have (yard waste, tires...) and it really comes down to paper.

http://www.mtu.edu/peacecorps/progra...esis-final.pdf

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Bottom trawling or dragging is not traditional to the best of my knowledge but was developed in the 1970's or so.

It has been devastating on fisheries ...

Evidently, trawling actually dates back to the 1300s.

A petition was presented to the English Parliament, in 1376, calling for the prohibition of a "subtlety contrived instrument called the wondyrchoum". This was an early beam trawl with a wooden beam, and consisted of a net with a very small mesh, about 6 m (18 ft) long and 3 m (10 ft) wide.

➥ History of Trawling; not a modern problem

[Delancey]

Meh, I'm unimpressed by attempts to camouflage laziness as being beneficial to the environment by suggesting pollution is a viable means to solving a homelessness crisis amongst aquatic creatures.

Do you really think that empty can is going to make a home for a fish? Do you really think that the reef is healthier because you just dumped a bunch on junk on it? Is that what being in harmony with nature means to you? Or are you really just being lazy?

These things you throw away required energy to produce. Aluminum production is particularly energy intensive, as is reflected in it's high cost per pound when compared to steel.

Glass and metal can be reformed almost indefinitely, however when discarded, the significant energy capital invested in producing it is lost forever.

The argument that it is okay to litter glass and metal in the water because it is benign is about as shortsighted and laughable a logic as "my trash is okay because it is only an eyesore"

Maybe some people don't think the sight of trash is offensive. Personally I find the sight of a powerboat to be a visual blight on any wilderness seascape, but to each his own.

[colemj]

Nobody has defended dumping anything on reefs or other coastal waters. We have discussed tossing certain items offshore - generally meaning in thousands of feet of water and out of sight of land.

Please find me a recycling center in my cruising grounds so I can be as environmentally conscious as you require of me.

Also please stop driving your car everywhere, running your central AC, dumping pesticides and fertilizers on your lawn and garden, eating factory-farmed food and buying tons of consumer crap because I find that to environmentally unconscionable (and very lazy).

Mark

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by thinwater

(assuming we are cruising where recycling is not available)

My question is, what harm does a wreck do, or a can/bottle that does not decompose? Though an eyesore to a human, it is only habitable ruble to the fish. In 70s there was all this talk about litter, but most of it was relatively harmless junk. The concern should be only for what can leach out.

This argument for humanity's inconsequential impact on the environment has been made over and over, through our history. Whenever awareness begins be be raised about an impact the counter-argument seems to go, "Oh don't worry, the trees go on forever, the bison will never run out, the fish are so thick you can walk on them...". You're right, of course, one can or bottle has zero impact. Two, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand ... nothing. How about 10s of thousands? 100s? Millions?? It starts with one.

I'm not an absolutist. I think there are times and places when over the side disposal is necessary. But if I've carried the can or bottle in on my boat, then clearly I have the space to carry it out. If you truly are cruising in a place with no proper disposal services (and clearly some people are cruising in those areas), then I would support tossing into deep water. But for most of us here, we do our cruising in short hops, where proper disposal systems are available. Surely it's not setting the bar too high to have most cruisers carry out what they've already carried in.

To me, it's just basic respect for others, and for the environment that all of us critters share.

[boatman61]

Damn.. didn't realise you were looking to be impressed.. thought you were looking for answers..
Mind it would be hard to impress anyone on a pedestal..
Have a good one..

[Kenomac]

The other day I was in a museum and saw some jugs which had been discarded into the sea over 2000 years ago... now priceless antiquities. When the OP refers to the "older generation" does he mean the Romans?

The little fishies are still wondering... "WHO TOOK MY HOUSE!"

[Prairie Chicken]

Good one Ken! I agree with your earlier comments too in that the kids seem to be the ones littering now. Perhaps it's time to reinvent the "Don't be a litterbug" campaign.

I have a question which arose a few months back with the "taking babies to sea" hallaballoo. I know nothing about diapers, but I'm thinking those disposable ones would have a lot of plastic in them & not be biodegradable. And I doubt if a family cruising would be washing out cotton diapers, although perhaps they are. So, what do passage-making cruisers do with those dirty disposables? I have a feeling I don't want to know.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Surely it's not setting the bar too high to have most cruisers carry out what they've already carried in.

To me, it's just basic respect for others, and for the environment that all of us critters share.

Like backpackers.

[svHyLyte]

On passages we discard organic waste, food scraps etc., over the side. We carry a heavy bag that glass (although we carry little of that) is put into and smashed with a rubber mallet before being dumped over the side. Cans have the tops and bottoms removed and are crushed flat before being discharged over the side. Plastics and waxed packing papers are washed out, cut up and stored in a plastic trash bag until they can be discharged ashore although burning in a fire-pit is often the best way to discard the stuff. Unfortunately, the amount of crap we see in the ocean that obviously comes from shore side sources is exponentially greater than any coming from yachts.

On a recent passage to Key West we thought we saw a flashing light on the horizon to windward of us. We hauled in the sails, gybed around and beat our way back to what we thought might be people in distress in the sea. Instead we found a bunch of partially deflated silver Mylar Happy Birthday; balloons tied together with ribbon, floating on the water surface, 60 miles off-shore. We recovered the mess, some of which already had barnacles starting to develop. I often watch/see balloon releases and wonder where these people think those things will land/end up.

[colemj]

It is only like backpackers if you are talking about coastal waters. Nobody has argued for tossing stuff in coastal waters.

Funny how nobody thinks a message in a bottle is littering - those are approached with romance and adventure...

Mark

[zboss]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

Like backpackers.

Backpackers do not carry in 30 square feet of food and beer

I was blown away by the amount of trash I saw being just tossed on the ground or into the ocean in Africa; the "1st world" is only a drop in the pollution bucket in the coming century when the population curve spirals upward in less developed nations.

I haven't an issue with tossing non-chemical aluminum, steel, and bottles overboard, where allowed by law. I agree with the poster that said cans and bottles form living areas for sealife. The sea doesn't care if the bottom of the ocean, ten-thousand feet down, is an eyesore, that's a human contrivance and its unlikely that anyone here, or your grandchildren's children, will ever see that firsthand.

[colemj]

If you go on the windward side of most Caribbean islands, you will find an incredible assortment of floatable plastic stuff - shoes, toys, rubber duckies, etc.

These are not from people tossing them in the ocean or from land dumps on the island. This is obvious because there simply does not exist a population within hundreds of miles that could support that amount of plastic stuff and much of it is completely incongruous with the place it is found in. For example, a few years ago, the entire windward sides of the uninhabited Jumento islands were littered completely with dildo's of all shapes, sizes and colors.

This is stuff lost out of shipping containers and floating to the islands.

So all you people in NYC and other hyper-consumer places - please stop buying all this crap because your actions are littering other lands and causing environmental harm. Do you really think your need for Lego's, plastic lawn furniture and inexpensive shoes (and apparently dildos) justifies ruining reef systems and polluting other people's lands?

Mark

[monte]

Originally Posted by zboss

Backpackers do not carry in 30 square feet of food and beer

I was blown away by the amount of trash I saw being just tossed on the ground or into the ocean in Africa; the "1st world" is only a drop in the pollution bucket in the coming century when the population curve spirals upward in less developed nations.

I haven't an issue with tossing non-chemical aluminum, steel, and bottles overboard, where allowed by law. I agree with the poster that said cans and bottles form living areas for sealife. The sea doesn't care if the bottom of the ocean, ten-thousand feet down, is an eyesore, that's a human contrivance and its unlikely that anyone here, or your grandchildren's children, will ever see that firsthand.

Where is it allowed by law to throw aluminium,steel and bottles overboard?