What a Load of Rubbish!

Have you ever stopped to consider just how much rubbish we create in a day? What do you do with it when you live on a boat?

 

A tub or sorted and condensed dry rubbish

'Resources' for us, include water, ULP petrol, diesel, food, alcoholic beverages AND access to waste disposal!

If you drag a wheelie bin out onto the verge each week or fortnight you get a sense of how much waste is generated but when you are on a boat and you have to keep it all with you in a small space for extended periods and the amount of waste generated daily is all too apparent! What do we do to mitigate this problem? To begin with, a lot of packaging gets removed even before items get stowed. Big and bulky items like wine/beer boxes are the first to go. Eggs are transferred to plastic egg cartons. Whatever possible is transferred to a sealed plastic container. Hooray for my Tupperware. Bags and cartons, wherever possible are removed and disposed of ashore. An examination of our daily rubbish will document all the cups of tea we've had because of the tea bags - luckily the Bloke likes his weak and black and I have it stronger and white so we can share one. There will be fruit and vegetable peels, although we attempt to eat whatever skins we can. It makes sense nutritionally as well as from a waste perspective. There will be plastic wrapping/bags from frozen produce, bread bags, cheese wrappers, packaging from our crackers, UHT cartons, empty jam jars, tomato tins, soap wrappers, beer and wine bottles etc. What to do? What to do?

Queensland regulations require the installation of one of

these notices on board vessels over 12m. That includes US!

There is no mention of where to display or what the containers should be?

 

Firstly, waste gets distributed around the boat and it needs sorting. Wine and beer bottles can returned to the locker that they came from. Obviously, beer in cans that could be crushed are a good idea but The Bloke has his favourites and they are not in cans. Cask wine is an option but we've not succumbed! Tonic for my GT is being created with the Soda Stream. Dry rubbish needs separating from wet. This allows for any particular rubbish receptacle to be very condensed. Paper and cardboard is stored flat and not screwed up. PET bottles are cut into strips. Any plastic jar/bottle with a with a wide opening is stuffed with whatever wet and composting stuff that can get jammed in. The screw cap will assist with odour management. Some items can be dried on a tray in the sun to reduce their volume a little and their propensity to breakdown into a sludge. This can be a problem if there are sea gulls or when its super windy! Obviously, attempting to dry out some of the vegetable waste while traveling (on sailing days) is impossible.

Sourced www.safety4sea.com

 

One thing we never do is dump household waste at sea. Maybe the occasional apple core but generally nothing goes over the side. A real cruiser that is heading for port, will even offer to take some rubbish ashore with them. (THANKS Julianna and Hugh!).

And while on the subject of waste and plastics, give that take-away coffee cup, single use plastic shopping bag, balloon, plastic straw etc a second thought. How certain are you it's not going to end up in a storm drain and then out into the waterways or oceans? We can all do better.

Image titled GUT PLASTIC sourced from Euroshore Newsletter, May 2013.