The garbage chronicles

26 March 2014

Update by Peter:
“When people think of ocean voyages they usually jump to the more picturesque parts of the experience. Blue water, clear skies, favourable winds and the creaking of wood and rope. People tend to skip over the more practical parts of such a voyage, not in the least the proper management of garbage.
One family is usually good for 1 bag of garbage a day. If that family were to go on a voyage of 30 days that would be 30 bags. Now multiply that by 5 and you get the number of bags our entire ships crew would be good for in that period of time. As you may understand such an amount of garbage is simply not stowable on our ship not to mention the horrible smell that would be wafting through our floating home.
No, at sea ones perception of garbage has to, and will ultimately change. For starters we have to sort everything we throw away. On our ship we sort our garbage into three piles; plastics, cans and bio waste. The plastics have to all be washed meticulously so as not to become a smelly problem later on (one would be surprised at how fast odours develop in 30 degrees Celsius). The cans have to be rinsed thoroughly, (again to stop them from becoming unpleasantly smelly) and they have to enter the appropriate bin wholly uncrushed. This so that later on it is easier to decrease their volume with a small but non the less effective mallet. Last but not least the bio waste, bio waste we chuck over the side when were out on the ocean. Our motto being, if it’s good enough for us than its good enough for the fishes.
Following basic procedures we end up with the next step in our excellent system, the clean plastics; when the plastic bins are full, we take scissors and cut the plastics to pieces hereby decreasing the volume of the stuff. Same goes for the cans. When full the bin is emptied and we take a mallet or foot to make them as small as possible. This last one is locally known to be quite therapeutic at times.
Juice and milk cartons are something different. There is no clear procedure as what to do with them so I used my own imagination. I cut them open rinse them carefully and then stack them into neat piles. You’d be surprised how little space a hundred cartons take after we‘re done with them. After all these weeks at sea everybody has had a few turns managing the garbage. Whether it is cutting plastic or crushing cans.
I like to think that doing these things every once in a while makes people aware of what they throw away and especially how. At home we don’t spare a glance, but here at sea we have to. It is one of the many aspects of sailing that appeals to me. Things that are so nicely taken care of back home get taken for granted. A ship is also a society, be it a small one. Small enough to immediately be confronted with practical matters such, as it’s own garbage. Instead of looking away we acknowledge the problem and find a solution. And as almost always that solution lies in teamwork and general awareness.

PS. From Ascension till now only 5 bags of garbage.”