Wednesday 5^th September

Rubbish 2XS…

This may not seem like much of an issue but in fact rubbish, on a boat, is a very big deal indeed. 

When you are at sea you can toss all of your food scraps overboard, with gay abandon.  I loved doing this.  In the galley area there is a nifty little hatch, expressly designed for this purpose.  I would take every scrap of food and post it through the little window, imagining the joy and delight in the sea below.  Oh yum!  Salami!  Mango!  Stale breadcrust!  Over-ripe bananas! 

But other items can’t be tossed; no dear little fishies are down there waiting for a beercan, or plastic packaging, or anything other than…food scraps.  Whenever we got to a marina, a town, a port, the first thing we would do is take out our garbage bags and dispose of them, SO happy to be rid of yet another pile of crapola.  This was OK in most parts of New Caledonia, Port Vila, Honiara, even Misima (PNG), but in the islands…well there is nowhere to dispose of garbage.  We struggled not to gather too much stuff, but it really was inevitable, one way or the other. 

On some very remote islands, the local people would paddle out and offer to take our rubbish away to burn it.  This was very kind and helpful, but I think there was an ulterior motive… What was rubbish to us might have been treasure to them. Maybe they could find a use for used batteries?  Dead biros?  Empty baked bean cans?  All of our horrid First World wrapping and packaging?

Back in Tasmania, I am always so grateful for rubbish bins and for the lovely neat and tidy trucks which come and haul our stuff away every week.  Twenty one years of living without rubbish collection, in the wilds of Margate, has made me very appreciative of this sort of municipal service and I pay my Hobart City Council rates gladly.

I have been following, with a faintly bemused eye, the current controversy over toxic waste in Tasmania.  I am very much in sympathy with the residents of Copping, who do NOT want a high-tech toxic waste dump in their green and pleasant environment. 

But…nobody wants a toxic waste dump… This is definitely a NIMBY (Not In My Back yard) issue.  Back in the dark days all of our toxic waste was, I think, taken offshore in a big green boat and dumped out at sea.  Gone!  No loner to be seen!  Not in anyone’s back yard…

But now, where can we dump it?  Not in the wilderness.  Of course not!  Not in Copping!  They grow veggies there, and cute little lambies.  Children frolic, oldcodgers like to sit on their verandas without having to see trucks of toxic waste on the roads.

It seems the answer is…the toxic waste needs to be disposed of somewhere else…

So the people for whom I feel the most sympathy are those who have to make the very hard decision of whose backyard is going to receive the toxic waste…