#IMO the ecologist in me thinks this would be the lesson so many people really need

[ardeawritten]

... Part of life of "living on a rock in the ocean in middle of nowhere" is the reality of Sorting Trash. Under the cut because I'm going to talk about real-life stuff like Where Your Used Tampon Goes

Every object that enters or exits the Rock must be hand-carried, including all food, possessions and toiletries, both directions. The only exception (sometimes) is solid & fluid human waste, but it's not always an exception because many visitors are Teenage Boys who like to find the weirdest thing to poop in possible.

And then yes their poop is sorted too.

As are all pads and tampons. Including the ones that get flushed, because they have to be cleaned out of the pipes and pumps by hand. This particular Rock sees several thousand visitors per year, and unless you take your personal trash home with you, it will be sorted.

Metals, glass, five varieties of plastics, fabrics/clothing, shoes, an enormous volume of travel-size to Costco-size hygiene product bottles, every single food container imaginable, and anything that can possibly be burned.

If it burns, it burns. If it is food/biodegradable it biodegrades. If it is sewage it septic tanks. If it recycles or goes to the dump, it gets boxed, bagged and crated and put on a barge to be carried to the mainland and driven to the processing station once a week. (Tampons burn but baby diapers do not.)

My job is 99% desk related so today was my first day on trash-sorting rotation and man. Nothing like a front-row seat to what two hundred people go through and jettison behind them in five days! The other reality of this particular Rock is that if it goes into you, onto you, around you or through you, it will end up in the ocean. (With the exception of, if at all possible, any kind of pharmaceutical product, if it's recognized on the sorting table)

Every food, soap, body wash, oil, shampoo, cleaner, hairspray and sunscreen, everything your body wears, eats and excretes. If you wear it, it washes off in the ocean. If you eat it, your (post-septic) waste goes into the ocean. If you leave it behind, the container will be recycled but the contents will be emptied into the ocean. It's a microcosm of the reality of everywhere that happens invisibly for most middle-class-and-up; but here, it's a little more immediate - Yes we just dumped so much liquid hair products into the ocean. You can dump it all at once, or you can dump it as rinsed off in the next hundred washes, but it'll get there one way or another. Today or tomorrow.

It all goes out with the tide.

Really, really makes you think about the liquids and solids in your life.