When you’re in Antartica, you start thinking a lot about garbage. Not because you create a lot of it, though you probably do, but because you are responsible for sorting through whatever trash you generate. It’s a matter of law, and a bit of peer pressure. Every piece of rubbish has to be shipped back to the United States for disposal, recycling or resale. There’s one boat a year and your garbage will be on it.
The 3,000 or so souls who stay in spring and summer at McMurdo Station, the biggest science base on the continent, live in dorms or houses equipped with a series of a dozen or so bins. You don’t mindlessly throw things in a garbage pail without having to consider exactly where they go.
The categories are: light metal, unusable clothing, food waste (anything that will rot on its sea voyage to the temperate zone), aerosols (everything from deodorant to spray paint cans), aluminum cans, burnables (candy wrappers, cardboard chip cans), glass, mixed paper, plastic and packing peanuts, non-recyclables (including construction materials), sani (anything with biological contamination including sanitary materials and condoms) and last but not least, Skua.
Skua, named for the brown antarctic gulls that sometimes dive-bomb McMurdo in search of a sandwich, is the place for ad hoc local recycling: the perfect place for the beach towel that seemed like a good idea when you got here but now won’t fit in your luggage, that old T-shirt you can’t bear to look at, that expensive hand cream that you just know is going to explode if you try to take it back on a plane. These are all eminently Skua-able. Somebody will use them in Antarctica. You leave them with thanks.
The recycling process can get fairly intense. There you are, standing at the bins with your room’s full waste basket. You read the bins as if they were an archeological site: Whoa, you think, no wonder that party went late, that must be four cases worth of beer bottles in the glass bin. And somebody on your floor has a touch of class, you realize, when you see the packaging from an upscale salon in California in the mixed paper container. But what does your trash say about you? And where do used cotton swabs go?
Editors note: Deborah Zabarenko, the Reuters Environment Correspondent, is reporting in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation Grant. You can read her articles here
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This response is in reference to Deborah Zabarenko’s article on Arctic ice caps melting 30 years ahead of forecast; dated Tue May 1, 2:59 PM ET. It is spurred by the comments of Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado. “That is because the ice reflects light and heat; when it is gone, the much darker land or sea will absorb more light and heat, making it more difficult for the planet to cool down, even in winter, he said.
Debra, if the ice caps that are melting and exposing darker surfaces to absorb more heat and subsequently making the earth hotter; furthering global warming, why stop there. Why not research the 70% portion of our earth that is composed of dark, absorbing waters and let me know how much heat thats pulling in from the sun. Wont this aid in fueling global warming havoc and agenda? Not to mention the dark terrains of the rest of the planets surface. The sun does not even directly shine down upon those areas at the caps. It gets very little exposure at all. Lets review the heat absorbed by our oceans at the equator. Can you send me finite data on that information? The ice does recede with in the summer months and regains it momentum and spread in the winter. Take some time to venture to the cold and frigid landscape of the poles as winter sets in. Send correspondence about the conditions and the heat felt in the area. I assure you, it will be frozen and consistent. Debra, be refreshing and do a bit more research and get both sides of the argument. Balance your reporting please. Also, if you can, ask Mr. Ted Scambos what type of automobile he drives and if he uses lightbulbs in his house.
Thank you
Dani
medicalman08@yahoo.com
- Posted by Daniel