Garbage

[bouncingyellow]

Originally Posted by cruise

When I brought my boat it came with a built in compactor, something I have never seen on another boat but I use it and love it crushes my rubbish right up

Sounds interesting having a compactor onboard, how much room does it take up, is it hand operated, would be interested to hear other cruisers thoughts on this.

[sestina]

To deal with plastic whilst at sea try this trick:

Cut the plastic into thin strips with a pair of scissors. Then stuff the strips into an empty 2 litre drinks bottle. You will be amazed at the amount you can force in.

[europaflyer]

If it can be stowed on the boat in the first place, why not just keep it on board and recycle when you reach the next port?

[wsmurdoch]

Originally Posted by JanetGroene

So many things now come in cans that cannot be opened at both ends, so they can't be flattened for easy storage.

I am away from the boat right now and can not take a photo, but I made a can crusher to completely flatten both soda cans and those one ended tin cans. While mine is made of aluminum channel, I can best describe it as two pieces of 2x4 lumber about 24 inches long hinged together at one end like the letter 'V'. With the contraption resting on the cockpit sole, I put the can to be crushed between the two boards near the hinge and step on the far end of the upper board flattening the can. We have carried all of our crushed cans for a month or two in a single bag.

Irish Eyes to the Bahamas

[JanetGroene]

Shredding paper is a terrific idea. It still pollutes but degrades easier. Anyway, the solution begins before you leave the dock. Can your own meats in re-usable jars. All you need for re-use is new lids. If you bring frozen foods, eliminate packaging. Have butcher custom cut meats with no skin or bone and wrap without trays. If it comes in condensed, concentrated or powdered form, bring it that way. If you must have a Keurig-style coffee maker, get a re-usable cartridge. I could go on but you get the idea.

[Buzzman]

I think the best that can be said for the 'over the side' proponents is - how would you feel if your land-based neighbours heaved their trash over the dividing fence into your back yard..??

Do unto others.....etc....

Quite apart from the utterly ridiculous amounts of single-use packaging our "lifestyle society" generates (IMHO often times unecessarily), it is well past time we humans, both collectively and individually, accepted FULL responsibility for our wasteful, finite-resource-depleting lifestyle....and a major part of that is getting rid of trash appropriately.

But remember people, the rule of thumb is "reduce, re-use, recycle", with recycling being only the last option, not the 'only' option.

So as Janet says, reduce what you take on board in the first place; re-use your own containers (like Tupperware and Mason jars), and then offer up the remainder to a known 'recycling' point, rather than a garbage depot.

India is amazing at recycling...but only because they have no welfare net and the very poor have to do 'something' in order to earn a living. Collecting plastics and sorting them from the rubbish dumped at garbage depots is a way of living for the lowest castes and the poorest of the poor in India.

We could learn a lot from them.

One thing we could teach them, though, is Container Deposit Legislation, or CDL. In South Australia (and many years ago in other States as well, before the low lifes in the packaging industry scuppered it) they have a 10c deposit at point of purchase on all beverage containers.

Community groups, Scouts, Guides, etc earn revenue by collecting them and cashing them in for the refund. An Indian peasant would be rich if they had such a scheme.

Please consider the planet...and our grandchildren's future....

[delmarrey]

Originally Posted by Buzzman

One thing we could teach them, though, is Container Deposit Legislation, or CDL. In South Australia (and many years ago in other States as well, before the low lifes in the packaging industry scuppered it) they have a 10c deposit at point of purchase on all beverage containers.

Community groups, Scouts, Guides, etc earn revenue by collecting them and cashing them in for the refund. An Indian peasant would be rich if they had such a scheme.

Please consider the planet...and our grandchildren's future....

We had a system in the old dazes. Why did they take it away? $$$$$ Follow the $$$$....
Even cars/trucks were recyclable. I recycled by boat by rebuilding it. There use to be jobs in rebuilding car parts (water pumps, alts, starters even batteries) now it's throw-away for the most part.

You need to go after the money people, not the little guy. The money people (politicians) tell us to conserve fuel while they hoard it and burn it like it's nothing.

[Buzzman]

No doubt the lobbyists and the money men behind the successfull politicians' campaigns are behind the dropping of such CDL legislation.

The bottom line is, a product in an "open market" capital-based economy continually seeks ways to reduce its market price in order to boost market share and 'compete' with rivals.

So any company that 'voluntarily' adopts CDL for its products is at a competitive disadvantage.

The only way to create a "level playing field" is for govt to mandate such via legislation, so that *no* manufacturer is disadvantaged. Or, to be fair, all manufacturers are equally disadvantaged, hence evening out the price competition.

I remember as a child collecting used soft drink bottles (glass) and cashing them in for the 5c refund as a way to supplement pocket money. It was cheaper for the glass manufacturers to recycle a proportion of old glass with new glass batches as it reduced their fuel/energy cost. It still would today.

The problem was the invention of PET. It undercut glass significantly and made most glass beverage containers obsolete. On price.

And, unlike glass, it cannot be remade into new PET bottles. It can only be 'recycled' into some other form of plastic product, usually black plastic pipe or bins or whatever.

Glass is, in fact, the only endlessly recyclable man-made material that can be turned into what it was originally. Metals corrode and some of the mass is lost. Not with glass.

So glass really could and should (IMHO) be the only thing we make beverage containers from, and CDL would enable the manufacturers to regain their product cost-effectively for recycling.

Unless plastics can be made from some sort of organic sustainable oil, like vegetable oil.

But try getting *THAT* past the lobbyists and their 'in pocket' politicos...!!

[MBLittle]

Originally Posted by Buzzman

Unless plastics can be made from some sort of organic sustainable oil, like vegetable oil.

I agree with everything but this last part. Vegetable oil is far from sustainable. The same for ethanol requirements in gasoline. All it leads to is one crop farming which requires massive government subsidies. Those subsidies destroy the agriculture business from the inside and undermine all other ag producers in trading nations. One crop farming also leads to miles of one crop farm fields which destroys Eco systems and is killing off the honey bee population at alarming rates.

The cheapest crop is corn, which takes an incredible amount of nitrogen, which must be replaced. Economically, the government pushes chemical substitutes to try and replenish this nitrogen, which again, in turn, destroys Eco systems from the run off, killing off rivers and drowning coral in silt. The coral dies, the ocean dies, mankind dies.

Agriculture in the western world is arguably the most unethical business venture there is. Artificially creating demand for more is dangerous.

We already have an obesity epidemic based largely on high fructose corn syrup replacing sugar from Central and South America. HFC made possible by massive one crop industries and government subsidies. It's unlikely the economies of Latin countries will recover.

[Buzzman]

I don't actually disagree with anything you said....perhaps I should have been more specific when I wrote "like vegetable oil".....as in, the key word is *sustainable*.

It might be oil from bacteria, or amoebas or algae or whatever...the key word is "sustainable".