Disposing of waste in paradise

[Heckler]

Watching Youtube videos and peeps in San Blas islands, no waste disposal infrastructure. My mind turned to what the cruisers do there, basically they go to one of the uninhabited islands and burn it! But what would you do? My mind thinks that anything biological as in food scraps, in to deep water to decompose. Tins and bottles, having seen old tins corrode away whilst scuba diving, no probs for me to dump them, the same with glass, that grinds back to component sand. Paper and cardboard? Should that be on board with cockroach egg issues? But surely is biodegradeable. Plastic bottles and containers? Should we not be joining the Mail campaign (simplistically speaking) to stop using them? A campaign to re invent the use of (paper) products instead of plastic. In the meanwhile a floating SS thing to tow behind the boat to burn the stuff on away from land?
Stu

 

[scrambledegg]

I am in complete agreement. We have to find a way to stop using single-use plastics. As a society we had no problems before the advent of plastic. You often hear the argument that our (UK) pollution is negligible compared to other giant economies so it's pointless dealing with it, however if we make the effort to substitute with more benign packaging, manufacturers around the world change their practices.
But what is this "floating SS thing" you refer to?

 

[Deleted member 36384]

In your context of being in remote places i.e. remoter than a isolated Hebridean Island, I agree that dumping a lot of biodegradable food stuff is a good idea. However, on the tin can front many, if not all, are lined with plastic, so I would not dump them at sea but rather wash, crush and store for disposal at a facility with waste collection.

I am pretty sure though that if I sailed to a genuinely remote place with all my stores then I would take all my waste back and not even burn the cellulose stuff on the beach. After all, on the way back it should take up less volume. Bottles I would take back as well.

 

[Elemental]

I am pretty sure though that if I sailed to a genuinely remote place with all my stores then I would take all my waste back and not even burn the cellulose stuff on the beach. After all, on the way back it should take up less volume. Bottles I would take back as well.

Exactly my view. If it fitted into the boat on the way out, it'll fit into the boat on the way back. I simply don't understand why anyone feels the need to dispose of anything, anywhere, except at locations that have 'proper' waste disposal facilities. Even locally to home, I'm concerned about the piles of apparently yachty waste I see piled alongside waste bins at remote anchorages.
Just take it away.

 

[Yellow Ballad]

I have seem people cut up old plastic packaging and put the bit into larger plastic bottles which can be crushed and sealed with the lid to save space.

The faster we move to using less plastic the better.

 

[Prasutigus]

Greetings
Anything metal, chuck it in the sea, we are sitting on a red hot ball of trillions of tons of metal.

Glass is silicon, like the seabed sand and beaches, toss it in.

Anything edible, throw it in. Lots of eager hungry mouths and plankton to feed, your galley gash will be gobbled up before it gets near the seabed.

Rope or nets might go round someone's prop, keep on board.

Any type of plastic, keep on board.

 

[Heckler]

I am in complete agreement. We have to find a way to stop using single-use plastics. As a society we had no problems before the advent of plastic. You often hear the argument that our (UK) pollution is negligible compared to other giant economies so it's pointless dealing with it, however if we make the effort to substitute with more benign packaging, manufacturers around the world change their practices.
But what is this "floating SS thing" you refer to?

Make a "thing" to burn stuff on rather than a pristine beach.
Stu

 

[Heckler]

I have seem people cut up old plastic packaging and put the bit into larger plastic bottles which can be crushed and sealed with the lid to save space.

The faster we move to using less plastic the better.

I remember being in the scrap metal business, PET was launched with the headline, recycleable, the newest thing! hmm, pity they use cheap labelling and plastic caps that pollute the scrap! I agree, the sooner we get away from it the better, go to paper based bio degradeable products, no plastic lining on tins, no more cling film wrapped food. More research on bio-burning the plastic we have. A thought for the bio warriors, oil and gas comes from bio degrading ferns and wood from dinosaur days. That came from sun and CO2, in effect a big battery that is being turned back in to heat (sun) and CO2. So we are using the sun from dinosaur days as a power source! Very simplistically speaking as a caveat!
I think the refusal of China to continue taking our plastic waste will concentrate minds somewhat!
Stu
PS one for VicS, Plastic made from gas and chlorine? how can we split it back to component parts?

 

[BabaYaga]

Greetings
Anything metal, chuck it in the sea, we are sitting on a red hot ball of trillions of tons of metal.

Surely it is much better to recycle.
An example: Recycled aluminium uses only 5 percent of the energy used for producing aluminium from ore.
Aluminium production uses a fair amount of the electricity generated, in the US about 5 percent of total.

 

[Heckler]

Surely it is much better to recycle.
An example: Recycled aluminium uses only 5 percent of the energy used for producing aluminium from ore.
Aluminium production uses a fair amount of the electricity generated, in the US about 5 percent of total.

Go check out San Blas Islands, thats what we are talking about! No friendly neighbourhood scrappy there! I am well aware of how to recycle alumimium, I used to do it with sloping hearth furnaces.
Stu

 

[RupertW]

Greetings
Anything metal, chuck it in the sea, we are sitting on a red hot ball of trillions of tons of metal.

Glass is silicon, like the seabed sand and beaches, toss it in.

Anything edible, throw it in. Lots of eager hungry mouths and plankton to feed, your galley gash will be gobbled up before it gets near the seabed.

Rope or nets might go round someone's prop, keep on board.

Any type of plastic, keep on board.

Yup that makes sense to me too unless you know you are going somewhere soon with recycling option. Orange rids are about the only food I hesitate about as I see them floating and on beaches and although not exactly offensive they are a bit untidy.

 

[BabaYaga]

Go check out San Blas Islands, thats what we are talking about! No friendly neighbourhood scrappy there!

I just did (by way of google). They look lovely. Dumping aluminium cans in those water seems to be particularly daft in my view.
https://ecocircuitospanama.wordpress.com/tag/recycling-in-panama/

 

[[70521]]

From my old climbing days, "you carried it in you carry it out"

Adding food waste to the environment changes the chemistry of the area. Why change something that has been unchanged for thousands of years.

Some interesting comments

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178635

slightly different environment, but the issue is the same.

 

[Elemental]

Greetings
Anything metal, chuck it in the sea, we are sitting on a red hot ball of trillions of tons of metal.

Great idea. Thanks ...

I could go on ...

I really hope you don't sail anywhere near me. If you can carry it to the destination where you use it, why on earth can't you carry it on-board till you reach a proper disposal

 

[Lon nan Gruagach]

A thought for the bio warriors, oil and gas comes from bio degrading ferns and wood from dinosaur days. That came from sun and CO2, in effect a big battery that is being turned back in to heat (sun) and CO2. So we are using the sun from dinosaur days as a power source! Very simplistically speaking as a caveat!

[bio-warrior]Yeah but.... But what took gazillions of years to grow, die, bury and turn into black gold, we are spilling out into the world in a few centuries. Its the concentration combined with new forms of hydrocarbon that would otherwise be bloody rare thats the problem. Think of it like this: store all the sunshine for a year and then look it all in the space of a second... you'll go blind.[/bio-warrior]

PS one for VicS, Plastic made from gas and chlorine? how can we split it back to component parts?

Plastic is made of long chains of hydrocarbons and various other chemicals: the one with chlorine in it is PVC.
Anyway, if you pyrolyse (heat in absence of oxygen) at ~650^oC the long chains break down to shorter ones and evaporate as gas. You will get a mix of LPG, petrol and diesel, conversion rate is ~1 litre of fuel to 1kg p-lastic with very few deposits remaining. These you can burn: LPG to keep the process heated (its not pure enough to be safe to compress and bottle), the petrol and diesel can go in cars (with a wee bit more tidying up)
There is a £1,000 desktop toy that will do a few kg per go. I really didnt like the look of that one since, in the promo vid, the Japanese creators seem to think its ok to activate a device by pressing the picture of a happy schoolgirl!
Next up are commercial plants that take 20,000kg charges.
In the middle there are a few amateur design that will take ~20 kilos and convert in 4 hours with thermostatically controlled 6kW heater (no recycle LPG to assist on this one).
Guess what I'll be building for meself this year???

 

[fisherman]

A dutch man on R4 yesterday has proposed a device to collect floating rubbish, he reckons with numbers much can be collected over five yaers. It's a loose floating boom see google. However other experts were asked: the first said "No, it's microscopic stuff you can't collect because you also collect phytoplanktons". next one said "No, we need to stop depositing it in the sea to start with". he came back to say he had tested for animal/plankton presence among his collection and found very little, and also that he wants to collect the big stuff before it turns into small stuff. Basically I got the impression the other two were saying "look this is an ecological disaster and we want to keep blaming everyone, it's our raison d'etre...etc etc" and they had to pee on an actual forward looking positive idea.

Here, from 38.50
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k0ncm

Incidentall, fishermen are often roundly blamed for ditching old nets. This doesn't happen except by accident. The head and foot lines are very expensive and the nets are brought ashore and stripped, ropes re-used, the netting is collected in dumpy bags by an outfit in wales that makes it into pallets (at least in Newlyn).

 

[fisherman]

Would shredded plastic be a good component of cement, same as has been proposed for old GRP?

https://fiberline.com/news/miljoe/breakthrough-recycling-fibreglass-now-reality

 

[Prasutigus]

Great idea. Thanks ...

I could go on ...

I really hope you don't sail anywhere near me. If you can carry it to the destination where you use it, why on earth can't you carry it on-board till you reach a proper disposal

Yes it's a great idea, plenty of homes for little critters, and it will either corrode away before the heat death of the solar system, or it won't, who cares?

Why does it matter if I sail ' anywhere near' you? Will it threaten the pink fluffy baby dolphins with their ickle smiling faces?
I thought this thread was about dumping gash overboard in paradise?

(Or are you signalling your green virtue by feigning disgust at those of different, (but equally valid) viewpoints, in order to protect your sanctimonious ethical purity from contact contamination by mariners of dubious faith in the holy religion of the 'environment'? )

I take a pragmatic approach, (see previous post) but the one thing which makes me want to drain my sump oil into the oggin and pick up my dolphin harpoon is holier-than-thou, tsk-tsking greens.

Happy New Year.

 

[johnalison]

I'm with the take-it-all-home group. Maybe it does sound a bit pious, and the contribution of yachtsmen is just a drop in the ocean compared to what comes out of the third world. The question, though, is a matter of principle. How can we tell other countries what they must do if we don't as a nation and as individuals clean up our act and set an example? It is not a matter of picking and choosing one kind of waste or another, it is all waste that must be properly disposed of, though food waste that would contaminate the boat is an obvious exception. The argument that the Earth is made of metal and another tin can doesn't matter is fatuous. I don't personally live in the Earth's core, though there are some that I would happily consign there.

 

[Biggles Wader]

Yes it's a great idea, plenty of homes for little critters, and it will either corrode away before the heat death of the solar system, or it won't, who cares?

Why does it matter if I sail ' anywhere near' you? Will it threaten the pink fluffy baby dolphins with their ickle smiling faces?
I thought this thread was about dumping gash overboard in paradise?

(Or are you signalling your green virtue by feigning disgust at those of different, (but equally valid) viewpoints, in order to protect your sanctimonious ethical purity from contact contamination by mariners of dubious faith in the holy religion of the 'environment'? )

I take a pragmatic approach, (see previous post) but the one thing which makes me want to drain my sump oil into the oggin and pick up my dolphin harpoon is holier-than-thou, tsk-tsking greens.

Happy New Year.

What a thoroughly unpleasant post.
I hope you are proud of it.