Our War With Waste

Column inches have been written about waste and the wastefulness of western society. There is a topical obsession at present with plastic bags for instance and a gaining interest in food wastage. We have a problem with waste on board too but with a twist, mainly what to do with it and where to put it.

Snipped up plastic is far more managable

We’ve become pretty adept at reducing food spoilage. Fresh provisions are consumed in pretty much the order that they will last. Salads greens like spinach will be eaten first. A paper towel popped into the bag until all the spinach is gone. Snow peas/mange tout and sugar snap peas are washed with a drop of vinegar, dried and then wrapped in paper towel before placing in a plastic bag or container. These are long keepers and will be be eaten at the tail end of a provisioning gap. Citrus is washed and dried too before being individually wrapped in foil (for up to 3 months or more). In so doing we never run out of limes for a G+T. Important priorities indeed!

A few ‘old school’ food preserving skills have been resurrected too eg pickling beans and cabbage.

A vacuum sealer has been another tool in extending the shelf life of dry produce. Meat lasts better generally when vac sealed and freezes better too.


The real dilemma though is not so much food wastage but what to do with the stuff that goes into the kitchen tidy. In a house or in a marina, no worries at all. Just tie off the bag when it’s full or a bit smelly and off to the wheelie bin or skip with it. On board however, that kitchen tidy needs serious management if you intend being out of range of facilities for 2-3 weeks at a time. The Bloke can fill the bin in just a day - he does not pay as much attention as me, the chief waste wrangler. Pretty much nothing goes overboard. Do olive pits count?

Our war starts with packaging. As much as possible is stripped off before produce is stowed. Styrofoam, cardboard boxes are in the skip before we leave the dock but inevitably the crackers for our sunset snacks will be in a foil-like wrapper plus an internal tray, both of which are infuriatingly springy and resistant to flattening when the time comes. The UHT milk carton can at least be flattened and the egg cartons also. Up until the moment that you need to live with your rubbish for a few weeks, life is carefree and potentially odourless.

Peels in a bucket that will be left in the sun to dry out a bit

The Bloke is less concerned with such domestic niceties. Beer cans, wine bottles, wrappers, tissues, tea bags, veggie scraps are all natural companions in his ‘big picture’ world view. It’s easy enough to tie off the bin liner and sling the bag in the dinghy which could on that basis, very quickly, become a
garbage barge! So the kitchen tidy has become a de-facto sorting station for me and the contents get redistributed around the boat. There is though, only so much space in the bilge.


Firstly, the wine bottles get returned to the locker they came from. The Bloke will get a shock after a few weeks to realise the locker is full but of empties! Beer in cans is preferable to bottles since cans can be crushed and stored separately. Nothing to see here, move along. Dry rubbish is stored in a bag outside of the kitchen bin. Paper and boxes are flattened. Plastic stuff gets snipped up for consolation purposes. The wet rubbish is the headache though as this is the stuff that will smell any day soon. Even triple bagging in scented bags won’t contain the methane for long! In short, rubbish gets consolidated on board and even a small looking bag will weigh a lot.

Vac sealed food scraps

Some cruisers stuff their wet rubbish into juice and milk cartons using the handle from a wooden spoon to jam in as much as possible and do up the cap. I’m not patient enough to do that and besides we don’t drink juice and 1litre of milk sometimes lasts a whole week. We’d be a few cubic litres short of receptacles. As far as is practical, the tea bags, fruit and veggie peelings and such are collected in a small tub with a lid. If possible these might be placed outside to dry out a little. More recently I’ve been re-purposing old vac sealer bags to hold wet rubbish and much to my delight, my 240v vacuum sealer unit will operate using a small inverter. I’m yet to discover how long my wet rubbish satchels will stay sealed and odorless but hopes are high for this latest brainwave. Maybe this will prove a little win over our waste even if the onboard war over where it all belongs is ongoing.