I sailed throughout my formative years and a bit beyond, so I suppose it’s not-so-nice stuff coming out of one or the other end, maybe both at the same time.
In the USA and western Canada it can just be a Dial product which turns out to be cocoamide something, which is probably that stuff from former Jaguar/Orangutan Forestry Companies displaced by Yam/Palm Magnate Companies, or maybe they slot into the captive fowl supplychain when they can’t make a profit turning feathers into poly-chinos. Soap, that is.
Moisturizer, fake aloe, cocoa butter, etc. are in often enough. Maybe we’ll ship the refillable dispensers with the ‘How to use a paper towel’ TEDtalk in the package content somehow and it’ll sort better. Of course paper towels will start coming from the giant eucalyptus grown in the water recycling plant, and there will be wonderful films about the irrepressibly curious child who kept flushing their CRISPR kits and nylon monomers down the drain prematurely only to discover a talent for summoning entire, pressed, cut-fit parade costumes from the loo. (Sponsored by undie-armor or such.)
Was that like, a haggis migration event in the pic?
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I saw Norm Abrams do that very thing at Burning Man in 1994.
The smell of these things doesn’t bear thinking about. Decaying fat smells worse than anything, and these are mixed with sewage to boot. I hope they give the shovellers breathing apparatus.
It’s when the “black water” container finally gunges up to the point that the sea toilet macerator pump can no longer function and intervention is required; in fact, the exact marine equivalent of a fatberg. It’s a term I’ve heard around the place that might well not have made it to Google. Nowadays holding tanks are required and you can’t just couple up your Blake to a length of hose and a seacock.
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And here I thought this was going to be political news.
I’m assuming you are referring to the well known marine technique of steam cleaning, as used for cleaning oil lines, tanks and so on.
The problem with sewers is that they operate at very low pressure. Introducing high pressure steam would have interesting side effects. There are stories in the literature of these occurring when, say, buildings are demolished with explosives and the sewer pipes were not capped off, or when a large flow of water was suddenly interrupted, having the effect of a hydraulic ram.
I have to admit that during the 1970s I attempted to cure a minor pipe blockage by pouring in a lot of hot water, adding some lumps of dry ice, and quickly sitting on the cast iron cover. There was an immense burp that did not clear the blockage, but several toilets reverse flushed. I was not asked to try again, we just had to wait for the man with the rotary unblocker.
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Some day in the post-petroleum world, they’ll mine those for lamp oil.
Captain Ahab hunting the Great White Fatberg.
Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Soap, and round the Bend, and round the Embankment Maelstrom, and round perdition’s drains before I give him up.
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I think I’d call Harry King, thank you very much. Even Solomon Grundy would not mess with Harry King.
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Call me I-smell.
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Already written about in Kate Griffin’s urban magic Matthew Swift series of books, starting with A Madness Of Angels
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They probably would have saved a lot of money if they had just called on @frauenfelder and his $6 drain weasel.
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You need a…Drain sea otter (largest current mustelid)
atrrib. Michael Baird,
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird)
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+1 for attempted Sciencing of the problem though. Shame you didn’t have any fireworks.
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Fats and oils are lipids and they can be useful in other ways - as attached.
Point being that you can save the used cooking oil, grease, etc. and recycle it to make biodiesel, which is much better for the environment than petro diesel.
Or you can just recycle it back to cooking oil. Yummy.
Now if only they could skip the middleman and put oil receptacles and other recycling bins/tanks/stations to be picked up by the municipal waste people.
Korea in some places has a very high level of recycling, with assorted bins for different waste types.
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There are lots of companies gathering up greases and oils, cleaning them up and selling them to companies like the one I work for. They’re just not doing household stuff, only restaurants. (every greasy fast food joint has a grease tub outside). We’re even paying for it (around 25 cents a pound) to convert it to biodiesel.
