Do You Dump Your Trash Over Board?

[colemj]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

I am now growing a pumpkin in this bucket. How is this silly?

It will be ripe before halloween.

Mark

[Pelagic]

If boat-Alexander wants to save and convert his rotting food, piss and **** on his boat... All the power to him.... but it is not the quality of life I aspire to, or a compact home I would like to visit.

Perhaps a farm would be more practical

[Mt2Salt]

Originally Posted by thinwater

About 6 posts (didn't count) of knee-jerk not thinking at all, until the first reasoned response. I'm in the recycling/environmental industry, have designed and built world-scale facilities, and still I can see the ocean as an acceptable place for some things. The thing to remember is that waste handling practices vary and recycling industries generally don't exist.

Yes, recycling is nice, but unless that infrastructure exists, it's just going on a pile. When something leaches from the waste, it will contaminates drinking water, which is certainly a scare resource. Perhaps cancer risk goes up. Perhaps they burn some of it and cancer risk goes up. On the other hand...

* A steel can will rust and return to iron ore.
* A glass bottle is inert, becoming a home for something. It is in a class of visual litter, only harmful to human sensibilities.
* Food scraps. I've never seen a long distance cruiser waste anything material. This is a non-category.
* Plastic. We all agreed to keep that on board.
* Paper. Again, not much of that on boats. Some will burn it, but in all honesty it is no different from a few sticks or leaves from trees.
* Oils and chemicals. I don't think we were talking about these. Any maintenance at sea is probably emergency. But just to get you thinking, I've visited a number of islands on a mission to encourage used oil and solvent collection. Guess where it goes? On Jamaica, for example, some goes in a pit in the ground at each "recycler" and some goes in the drain (the harbor in Kingston is nasty). So shore-side recycling is not always so good. Why don't they burn the oil for fuel at least? because they burn cheap 6% sulfur fuel oil, nearly 10x as dirty as can be burned in the US.

Also there is an implication that a "ship" will visit a port were proper management exists. For the Pardeys that was not the case.

I think it is a matter of smart sorting, but assuming that there is less impact on land is a knee jerk reach, not a reasoned decision. Further more, most cruisers--certainly the Pardeys--have FAR less impact on the environment than the typical consumer using 250 gallons of water per day, mounds of energy and consumer good (that the water use and waste they cause), and driving all over.

Just keep your plastic and figure out that sailors are inherently low impact, because we must be low usage.

(No, I don't dump waste or holding tank; I'm a coastal cruiser and good shore-side facilities are common. I can wait.)

Well I think that all cans now are lined with plastic. They are not the cans of the old hobo days.

[zboss]

Originally Posted by Mt2Salt

Well I think that all cans now are lined with plastic. They are not the cans of the old hobo days.

That OK, they have discovered that mother nature has once again come to the rescue...

Marine microbes digest plastic : Nature News

So, please let nature do as it does. From my perspective, and biologically, its not any different than shitting in a bucket and feeding it to your plants.

Next you know they will try and say "put more plastic in the ocean - there are staving microbes that must be fed!"

[nimblemotors]

Did you actually read this article?

"It's yet another mechanism for the particles of plastic that we throw away to potentially come back to haunt us."

Next one will say nuclear power radioactive waste is speeding up evolution by creating deformed/abnormal genetics.

No limit to human rationalization.

Originally Posted by zboss

That OK, they have discovered that mother nature has once again come to the rescue...

Marine microbes digest plastic : Nature News

So, please let nature do as it does. From my perspective, and biologically, its not any different than shitting in a bucket and feeding it to your plants.

Next you know they will try and say "put more plastic in the ocean - there are staving microbes that must be fed!"

[zboss]

Hey, I'm all for a godzilla attack. Need to thin out the herd so we have more room to anchor.

[Matt sachs]

Ugggg! Surely they don't dump this in the drinkl

[zboss]

They certainly do!

[Matt sachs]

Originally Posted by zboss

They certainly do!

Kinda make a few cans overboard seem trivial ( I know its not )

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by Matt sachs

Ugggg! Surely they don't dump this in the drinkl

Pure coincidence I guess, but it's funny how you picked a picture of the most "famous" trash barge in history, the Mobro 4000.....

A video and story of the barge here....
The Most Watched Load of Garbage in the Memory of Man | Motherboard

The contents of this particular barge where eventually incinerated.....

Just posted for interests sake....

[JPA Cate]

As far as I know there are many garbage barges worldwide, and I see no one offering to pay more taxes for 1st world places to come up with solutions for them.

Just sayin'.

Ann

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by GordMay

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

Ahem Gordon.....from the above cited source.....

"
British fishermen continued to use trawl nets despite the ban, but trawling didn’t become the ravishingly successful fishing method of today until the advent of steam power and diesel engines in the 19th and 20th century."

But your point is taken, to the careful observer, even those crude first attempts were a scourge upon the seas. Oh how we have evolved.

[Nicholson58]

We cruised on Lake Cumberland 45-50 years ago (wow). In those days, the head was a direct pump-out & that gave us the creeps. We collected and hauled everything for the week(s). Now, mandatory including holding tanks. Times were totally different.

We are cruising the Great Lakes for now. Total ZDZ. We collect, hold, haul. Air Head & holding tank. If they catch you in mid-pee its 5 kilobucks.

We try to get rid of all plastic & cardboard of new supplies before departure. A good collection of well-sealing PET jars is where it all goes. Plastics is now a world offshore no-no anyway. In remote areas we bury the airhead contents & recharge with dry leaves & mulch. I consider it good training for salt water cruising as well. I wouldn't like some one messing up my back yard.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

We cruised on Lake Cumberland 45-50 years ago (wow). In those days, the head was a direct pump-out & that gave us the creeps. We collected and hauled everything for the week(s). Now, mandatory including holding tanks. Times were totally different.

We are cruising the Great Lakes for now. Total ZDZ. We collect, hold, haul. Air Head & holding tank. If they catch you in mid-pee its 5 kilobucks.

We try to get rid of all plastic & cardboard of new supplies before departure. A good collection of well-sealing PET jars is where it all goes. Plastics is now a world offshore no-no anyway. In remote areas we bury the airhead contents & recharge with dry leaves & mulch. I consider it good training for salt water cruising as well. I wouldn't like some one messing up my back yard.

I try to dump excess packaging right at the store where. Bought it. Outside K Mart, or Lowes. Whatever. My idea is that if I leave the trash at the source, I make them pay, ay least a bit, for the disposal thereby encouraging them to reduce packaging. Small but in the right direction


I still want a $2.00 deposit on those disgusting plastic bags.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Delancey

I was a bit shocked when my wife read me the following passage from Lin and Larry Pardey's "Care And Feeding Of The Offshore Crew" regarding trash.

"After twenty four days at sea you feel you are sailing on forever, leaving a trail of cans, bottles, and boxes to mark your path. I find myself feeling guilty about all of this. Cans, organic garbage, paper, and bottles will all sink or be eaten if they are tipped overboard individually at sea. But plastics is always a problem. One solution is to put any plastic bags inside bottles or jars you are jettisoning, then fill the jars completely with water so that the jar and plastic sink to the bottom."

Really?

Gee, thanks older generation. Thanks for getting yours while the getting was good. Thanks for leaving the world a better place than you found it. Nice work.

Yes...they should have known better no matter what era they are from or when it was written. It was well known in the 60's the pollution problem with plastics.
Maybe they'll write another book on "Sailing your garbage".

Originally Posted by hpeer

Gee, if we did that most of corporate America would be in jail, and maybe should be.

In their defense that was written in a different time.

As for ourselves we don't dump anything that doesn't degrade naturally, certainly no plastics.

We find it hard when we go for a walk yo not stop and pick up trash along the way.

For the way back crowd.....where I grew up every town had some kind of street guy or wino who would ride around on a bike and collect cans and bottles for recycling, to get the deposit. Then the glass companies lobbied to get the deposits removed and that put those guys out of business.

I think we should have a dollar per beer can, bottle, and two dollars per plastic bag deposit.

I know since the deposit charge on cans and bottles in Ca., that streets are alot cleaner.