What happens to our garbage?
What happens in the US or in Antarctica to the stuff we put in our garbage or recycling cans?
At one point, garbage in Antarctica was simply dumped into the ocean. You have heard some of Paul’s stories and you learned all about how this has damaged the seafloor communities in front of McMurdo.
Do you remember how long the chemical and the organic waste affect the seafloor communities?
Now Antarctica has the opposite approach. You have already read a bit about how we have up to 20 different bins in which to place our trash so it can be shipped off Antarctica. How exactly do we do this and what does it involve? Where does the trash go?
Let’s look at the life cycle of our trash...
Trash is first sorted the minute it is born. Once this piece of paper, this apple peel, muffin wrapper, old screw, or holy sock is used up and done in its former life, it immediately gets placed in the appropriate bin, whether it’s in our dorms, in the lab, or in the cafeteria. In the bathrooms, napkins, razors, and bandages have their own bins. Food waste and paper napkins have individual spots in the cafeteria. Paper, pens, muffin wrappers, tape, bio waste, glass bottles, and metal bits all have their own homes in the office and lab garbage cans.
Where do you put what? There are cans for lab waste, food waste, sanitary waste, plastic waste, paper towels, non-recyclables, metal bits, and lab glass.
Once the original users of the waste have sorted it, the janitors accompany the trash on the second leg of its journeys. They take the trash out of the bins in the dorms, the work buildings, and the cafeteria and place it in giant dumpsters, appropriately labeled, in the streets of Mactown .
Then our Waste Management crew, known as the Wasties, begin their work and the life cycle of our trash gets more complicated. Trash Attack comes next as the Wasties use big forklifts to move the dumpsters into the Waste Barn, a temporary sorting center of the trash.
Joleen the Wastie using a Forklift to haul a dumpster of plastic waste
The Waste Barn - the temporary sorting center
The poor trash gets dumped onto the floor of this barn so Wasties can sort most of it a second time.
A view of the inside of the Waste Barn. Can you see the Oscar the Grouch the Wasties made? It's made entirely of stuff found in the various bins.
A view from the back of the Waste Barn - the center space gets filled with trash to be sorted into the big boxes that line the walls.
Most of the trash gets taken out of its original plastic bag and thrown into bigger containers that then get shipped away to be recycled in the United States. Paper towels and mixed papers go into their respective boxes.
Waste that's had its second sorting goes in these boxes and shipped back to the U.S..
Cardboard goes into the Green Elephant, an old cardboard baler that has been sorting and slicing cardboard for the last 22 years. This smart machine gets the cardboard ready for pulping, a process which creates a cardboard soup which also separating the tape, staples, and labels off the cardboard.
The Green Elephant. Cardboard goes up this, then gets dumped into a big box and pulverized so it can be recycled.
Plastic trash gets further sorted into two piles according to their number. Plastics with the lucky numbers 1 or 2 continue their life as they get mashed by the plastic balers and then properly recycled! Plastics with the unlucky numbers 3-7 either get mashed into plastic bales which could be buried in a landfill, sold, or stored until some country decides they can pay enough money to make it profitable for the USAP to send it there. About 3 years ago, plastics were lucky as the world market was such that 100% of waste that was recyclable was recycled! Their life continued as something else.
Two hungry plastic balers chew up the various plastics into tightly packed plastic squares.
Plastic bags that hold the trash also either get reused or they get smushed into boxes in a special baler that’s still strong after 19 years of hard work!
Bubble wrap is one nasty piece of trash. This horrible trash has many chemicals in it as well as pockets of air, which destroy the plastic baler the Wasties use to condense the plastic waste. Thus, the smart Wasties try to reuse the plastic bubble wrap or they sadly send it to the non-recyclable bin and it goes to a landfill in the United States.
Aluminum cans get fed to an Alumasaurus! This contraption has a big belly, a box in which the cans get thrown. They then travel up the neck of the Alumasaurus, a conveyer belt, and out a window where the Alumasaurus spits them into a mill van that too will pass on the aluminum to the U.S. where it gets recycled.
Cans waiting for their joyride in the alumasaurus
Certain cans also fall into the category of pesky. First off, these creatures like to make the hard-working Wasties dirty. The leftover drops in the bottom of the cans get on their shoes, their gloves, and their clothes so much so that their gloves are soaking wet after just a few hours of sorting. Even worse, the ones that are smashed, considerably dinged, or have the little CO2 balls inside of them (like Kilkenny beers), get rejected by the Alumasaurus and end up in landfill – poisoning more critters. The kind Alumasaurus, however, further helps the Wasties and lazy humans by using its sensors to spit out mis-sorted corks and lids.
Ben and an un-recyclable aluminum can. The CO2 ball in this can prevents it from being recycled unless you remove it through a hole in the top or bottom of the can.
Glass bottles arrive in the Waste Barn and immediately get divided into one of four boxes.
Which glass bottle is worth the most? One of these makes real money for the US Antarctic program!
Sierra Nevada bottles and other “California” bottles like to make money for the USAP and so they get put into their own bin. Each hard-working “California” bottle can earn between 5 an 10 cents for the USAP by being recycled properly in the United States. The less-hardworking green, clear, or brown bottles get put into their own categories and shipped off to also be recycled in the United States. What lives will they lead then?
Sharp waste, and sanitary waste, which is anything with human blood or fluids on it and sludge and “cakes” from the waste water treatment plant, do not get handled by the Wasties. It is simply put into refrigerated mill vans and stored away from town at a place appropriately named Fortress Rocks. Then it gets shipped to California or Washington where most of it is burned though some food waste is used as compost.
Overall most of the solid waste in Antarctica has a second life of some sort.
What item that you possess do you think had a former life as something else in Antarctica?
Wasties with a box of waste. What treasures will they find in here?
The Wasties like their job with the trash especially as it’s much more than simply sorting trash. They walk their rounds in the morning as they collect the trash; they operate forklifts, balers, an Alumasaurus, and other cool machines; and they use carpentry and painting skills to repair lids and pallets and make stencils for the boxes. Furthermore, they know how to make good use of their free time. They put on performances at McMurdo’s Christmas show, and they create masks and wooden statues with treasures found in the trash for for McMurdo’s annual Icestock party. Did you see the mask of Oscar that watches over the trash sorting from his perch at the back of the Waste Barn.
Ben the Wastie leader with a baler for the plastic bags. The baler smushes them into a tightly packed square that gets recycled.
Ben Morin, one of the leaders of the Wasties who kindly showed me around the Waste Barn, came from Maine. Wanderlust and a lucky find of a copy of the Lonely Planet’s, Antarctica, brought him here. Though he applied for everything, he’s happy he ended up a Wastie, a true Steward or Custodian of this pristine environment. His message to us is that “There’s more to it [waste] than you would think. The process is incredible.” He urges us all to reuse stuff more than we think and to “use your imagination”.
Speaking of which, what will you do with your trash now?