Hello and welcome to your questions, in which we take one of your questions and
we answer it for about five minutes or so. And I think this one is going to divide
the audience. And I think having had a quick discussion with Liz about this
it's going to divide us as well! So the question is, and we get asked this
quite a lot, is what do we do with our rubbish whilst we live on our boat? It's
a big question because of course it does open up lots of discussions about the
environment and rubbish disposal and so on. I guess we should start with just
describing what we do. Basically anything that you can eat, and
anything that's organic goes over, and it goes over whether
we're at anchor or in the middle of the ocean. So if it's completely biodegradable
basically if it's biological, it goes over the side. A couple of months ago we did a
video which we entitled "Living like Robinson Crusoe" and in that video
we went on to show how we picked up rubbish. And it opened up a huge debate about
what we should be doing with this rubbish. A lot of people suggested that
we can burn the rubbish. I think the the point to make is that
the rubbish we picked up was all plastic. It was plastic specifically that
we picked up. Having said that, people are suggesting that you can burn plastic.
Now when we came to Tioman, which is where we are now, we came via a little
island called Tinggi and we had four or five bags of rubbish, and it
wouldn't have been fair to have taken that rubbish ashore there, because it has
a population of about 1,500 people... so what would they do with it? They'd
probably burn it. In Tioman we were happy to see that they have recycle bins with little
signs that say "recycle your rubbish", and you can divide up your tin cans and your
plastic bottles. The only thing is that every night as we sit here in anchor
we can smell burning plastic. It's all burning ashore. And, of course, probably
most of you know that burning plastic releases dioxins into the atmosphere.
Carcinogens, toxins... yeah they can be extremely harmful
to ourselves and to the environment and to the atmosphere. And I mean even the
the professionals out there are divided about whether it is actually effective
to incinerate. so the argument is that if you incinerate at high enough
temperatures, and you filter the smoke that comes out of the incinerator, then
you control those dioxins. But some people aren't necessarily in agreement
with that either. So you know, should we be burning plastic when we go ashore to
help the Islanders not have to do it for us? Because that essentially seems
to be what happens. We carefully package it all up give, it to them to be recycled
and it gets burnt anyway! And that's actually getting us nowhere at all. We
know of a lot of yachties, and we'll admit that we did it ourselves, a lot of
yachties will throw tin cans over the side.
Now aluminium beer cans, there's a special way that if you rip it and you
throw it in the water in such a way, it's guaranteed to sink. So a lot of yachties
do this. And I know we used to do it as well... then we got told off didn't we?
We got told off! There's a couple of reasons for that. The first thing is that
aluminium cans are actually lined with a plastic, to not only hold in the ink on
the outside and the labeling, but also inside it actually acts as a kind of
preservative. That obviously takes a while to break down. Do you know how
long it takes it an aluminium can to break down? I don't know, tell me Jamie! 200 years.
For a... an aluminium can. A tin can is 50 years. Okay, so when we're
talking tin can we mean a tin can that you keep your peas and your baked beans
in. Yes. All right, but the drinking cans for Coca Cola, Fanta and all that
crap, they've got plastic in them? So what we were arguing about just now was...
While I agree with you on the plastic coated soda cans: Yeah
they should go. But the tin cans that we keep our vegetables in, I don't have a
problem with throwing those over when we're quite a way out, when you've got
a mile of sea beneath you. Hey, isn't that just kind of again the whole
out-of-sight out-of-mind thing? You know, it's not my problem if I dump it over
the side and it sinks to the bottom a mile in the ocean. If it was carcinogenic,
if it had toxins, if someone would tell me that by doing that I'm actually
releasing toxins into the water which are gonna hurt the animals, then I would
rethink it. I haven't found that information anywhere, but as far as I
understand you're just putting tin back into the earth. And my biggest,
the BIGGEST thing that pisses me off generally about recycling and generally
getting rid of rubbish, is that this earth is 7/10 ocean. Only 30% of the
earth is covered in land, so why do we think that it's OK to shove everything
on the land in landfills, or whatever it is we do with it, and the
other 70% is is so pristine we mustn't put even one tin can in it. For me, a tin
can in the middle of a very deep ocean if it's not causing any harm is no worse
than putting it in a landfill. OK, yeah I get your argument. I I think at this
point I'm just going to put a little overlay over this discussion now, and
show you some photographs of aluminium beer cans that have collected. Now I
assume this is in shallow water, so these are in anchorages. So you can imagine an
anchorage with a whole load of boats , they were all having a party and they chucked
their tin cans over the side. And you shouldn't do that. Definitely you
shouldn't put anything in the harbour or where you're anchored, nothing except for
foodstuffs. Nothing else goes in there because it will just rest there. When
you've got a mile of ocean beneath you, okay well it will rest at the bottom but
it will gradually disintegrate and it will eventually go
to back to tin into its elements. As long as it doesn't cause harm to the animals... and I
do know that some environmentalists say that some things, for instance glass or
things that are not not harmful, will act as little homes for some great sea
creatures. So you know I think we've got to be very careful about what we do and
we don't throw over the side, and what we do and don't put in the earth, it's the same thing.
Glass is an interesting one, because we attempted to smash the glass on the
bow of the boat to break it up. It's a bit dangerous though because you get
glass splinters all over the deck. So do you then just fill up the glass from the
tap, fill it up and throw it over the side for it to sink to the bottom? I haven't got a
problem with glass going into the ocean, again it needs to be a way out, because
when I was little I used to collect the glass, the bits of glass that used to end
up on the beach and have been rolled in the surf. They've got that gorgeous lovely
texture, all rounded and pretty, and lots of different colors. We used to get them all
over the beaches in the UK, you just don't see little bits of glass anymore.
And that's because we're all using... PLASTIC! Did you know, glass though,
they can't actually even decide how long it takes to break down when it's smashed
up. Of course it gets ground down, but a whole glass bottle if it were to sink to
the bottom of the ocean takes so long to decompose they actually don't know
how long it takes. Some people reckon it takes a million years. But why is that a
problem though? Look at a glass bottle that's not
producing any kind of dioxins, it's perhaps giving a few sea creatures a
home, perhaps it's going in a little bit shallower and helping to form part of
the coral... Isn't glass made from sand in the first
place? Here's some other interesting facts, just on decomposition: so
cigarette butts between one to five years; tin cans 50 years; aluminum cans
200 years; plastic beverage holders, now these things are evil, these things,
you know they're when you get a six-pack of beer,
they take 400 years. 400 years to decompose! Now plastic does decompose in
the water, let's get our facts right, it will decompose, but if
it takes 400 years to decompose that thing's floating around in the ocean and
we've all seen photographs of turtles and dolphins and marine animals
that either swallow these things or they get caught up in them. It's all coming
back to plastic. Yeah, it all comes back to plastic. And the problem with this
bloody planet, and the human beings on it, is that we seem to love plastic.
And the manufacturers can't stop making plastic CRAP. There's too much plastic on it.
Just stop making plastic now, just stop it. When I grew up, your milk came in
a milk bottle, and it was delivered and then the next day the bloke would come
back (the milkman), he'd take the bottle away, wash it out, and then bring it back
again. Actually we do see that, we have seen that. In places like Turkey you
could recycle your beer bottles, and in here they do a lot of that kind of
recycling as well. You used to get a penny back didn't you, when you took
your bottles back to the shop. This is all very well, but this doesn't help
us. As yachties, what do we do? I think the only thing that we can do as
yachties is to try and minimize the amount of plastic that we
buy in the first place. Absolutely. And that's from going to the supermarket and taking
your hessian, recycled shopping bags - trying to avoid... and
of course the other thing when you go into shop, and they immediately put all
your gear in plastic bags. In the UK now I think they're obliged to ask whether
you want plastic bags, and they charge you for bags. They don't do that in some
of these countries, so it's up to you as the person buying this gear to
take... yeah, take your shopping bag with you. That is all we can do... We
can do better, I mean only today I was desperately thirsty and I bought a
plastic bottle full of water, so that will go into the rubbish, and it'll go onto
the island to possibly get burnt tonight. So really places like Lipe in
Thailand, they provide you with a stainless steel container and they have
little spots all around the island where you can just fill up with water.
They're trying to stop plastic bottles and it's great. There are lots of
initiatives around the world, there's no point in getting too upset because there
are loads of initiatives. We should just mention that Liz is talking about
TRASH HEROES, and this is a nonprofit organization set up by both tourists and
the local people on Koh Lipe. And they now have lots and lots of different
factions around, not just Thailand, but in Malaysia and Indonesia as well, and these
guys are doing a great job. The sad thing is is that it's from the bottom, it's
done from the bottom up, you know. There's no government incentive. It seems as if
there is no government incentive from the top down to incentivize people to
not buy plastic. So there we go. Interesting discussion. Let us know what
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In the meantime... Peace, and fair winds.