Lets Talk About Trash

Let’s talk about trash. I have yet to see this discussed in my research. So you are planning to circumnavigate the earth and may be at sea for weeks. Do you bring bottled water, paper towels, paper plates and cups? I think not. For those of you who consume alcohol, do you bring 5 cases of beer in bottles or cans? I am assuming if you are a decent human being, you won’t be throwing your trash overboard, so you will be collecting it and storing it which may eventually take on an odor. I have heard of people being at sea for weeks. The trash can add up right?

I am thinking instead of paper towels, you bring cloth napkins. Instead of paper plates you bring reusable plastic lightweight plates (Use plastic to keep the weight down). If you only bring enough plates, cups and bowls for the amount of people you have on your trip you will keep the trash and the dishes to a minimum. Some prefer bottled water, but I would imagine a good water maker and perhaps a compact reverse osmosis water filtering system would provide good tasting clean water. This would save on weight and space and keep the level of trash down.

Perhaps instead of cases of beer and wine, you bring a small keg or wine in a box, or switch to hard liqueur and mix it with your favorite beverage. After all, where would you keep all the empty bottles or cans? If you are a soda drinker, do you bring cans or the plastic bottles? Soda isn’t healthy, so maybe you can switch to juice. Perhaps the powdered juice will do but if not you could bring the frozen can variety.

I think I heard of one cat coming with a garbage disposal. Perhaps this is more common then I know or it is a new trend that is catching on. Is it legal to dispose food waste into the ocean? I found the following statement from the USGS Marine Sanitation Devices (MSDs) web site.

Discharge of Graywater
Graywater is defined as drainage from dishwasher, shower, laundry, bath, and washbasin drains. It does not include drainage from toilets, urinals, hospitals, and cargo spaces. Gray water discharge is prohibited only in the Great Lakes. Gray water is NOT sewage and may be discharged overboard without passage through an MSD or a holding tank. In fact, draining galley wastes into the MSD is not recommended, because food waste is much more difficult to decompose than the human sewage which the marine sanitation device is intended to handle.

Regarding human waste the MSD is required while the vessel is within U. S territorial waters (three nautical miles offshore), the Great Lakes, and navigable waters. A valve may be installed on any MSD to provide for the direct discharge of raw sewage when the vessel is outside U. S. territorial waters.

If I understand this correctly, you can dispose of sewage without treating it when you are at least three miles off U.S. shores. There was no mention of when you are allowed to dispose of graywater. Unless I missed something technically you can dispose of graywater whenever you like although I am sure this is frowned on in some situations. I presume there are some limitations on disposal of graywater, I just haven’t found it.

Bottom line is that trash can be kept to a minimum. This will save on space and keep our environment cleaner.