Trash

 3/19- Vero Beach 

   Happy Spring Equinox. Spring begins tonight at 11:06. That means that the length of the days are equal to the length of the nights. It also means that the sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west. And there are druids all over the world celebrating. 

    The thing I wanted to talk about tonight is trash. As someone who dwells on a boat trash is something we have to be very concerned about. When we are anchored out there is no place to just deposit your refuse. It may have to sit in your boat for several days so we really try to make as little trash as possible. When we provision we try to take as much stuff out of the packaging as possible in order to not have it on the boat. We have containers for things like cereal and pasta so that boxes can be left at the dock. There is also the matter of garbage and food waste. Boy it doesn’t take long for that stuff to reek in this heat. Still no matter how we much we try we end up with a shopping bag of trash every day or so. At least at marinas they have ways to dispose of this properly. 

    We try to recycle as much as we can but it has been hard to do here in Florida. It isn’t just Florida either as we got further south there was less and less recycling. Now I know that only 5% of recyclables actually get recycled but it just feels wrong throwing these large plastic containers into the dumpster. People here do not even recycle their cans and bottles. Some grocery stores have “recycle” bins but these are mostly mistaken for trash cans. We still out of force of habit sort our trash but inevitably we throw it all in the same dumpster. 

    We went and donated blood today. There is an organization called One Blood that runs blood drives. One of the things that has always bugged me about the Red Cross is that they require appointments to donate blood. One Blood does not and they cheerfully accept walkins. We took the bus to the clinic and donated our blood and we got a cool tote bag for our efforts. They also let you know when someone receives your blood which is kind of rewarding. 

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