Mc Murdo’s Inner Workings: Waste Barn

Ok let’s Trash Talk!

This isn’t what you’re probably thinking. I’m not writing about gossip or being mean. This is how intense the waste management system is here on the ice.

 

 

Ben, our tour guide, sorting some mixed paper

Plastic compactor and recycling bins

 On Monday I went to the Waste Barn where one of my former roommates, Vicki, works sorting our recycling and trash. Vicki works at the Waste Barn with a handful of others diligently sorting out all the bags of stuff we throw away. This is all sorted into several categories and is usually then packaged up as small as it can be and then shipped back to the US via boat in January.

Vicki(left) and co-worker reassembling a bin to be brought out back around base

The cardboard conveyor to the compactor

Vicki and I

Some of the joke bins around Mc Murdo

The real bins

 

 

 

Another joke bin. 

 

 

A set of sorting bins in my dorm

The janitors take the bags from the bins inside to the large boxes outside which are taken to the Waste Barn. 

Depending on what the item is dictates what happens to it...

Clothing scraps- sold to China

Returnable bottles- refunds from California

Metal- sold at auction

Wood chips- sold for heating

Paper towels- landfill

A very neat place to learn what happens to our stuff that we throw away.