Vol. 1 Issue 9
Page 4
May 10, 2012
Chester’s Challenge
Sailors work to properly dispose of waste Story and photos by MC3 Ian Cotter
Everyone produces waste. Whether you throw out a candy wrapper, finish that Diet Coke, or toss that paper you didn’t need, it all ends up somewhere. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), trash processing is a coordinated process that requires garbage separation and proper handling. Divisions on board must separate their garbage into three categories: paper, plastic, and dunnage. “Paper dissolves in water, dunnage sinks to the bottom, and plastic gets turned into ‘pucks’,” explained Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Joshua Hamilton, the work center supervisor and leading petty officer of Nimitz’ waste processing room. “Plastic is harmful to the environment because animals can eat it or get caught in it.” Initially, when divisions bring their trash to hangar bay three, they must put each bag into a designated triwall. “During flight operations, we can’t dump,” said Hamilton. “When flight ops aren’t going on, people can just send their paper and dunnage down the chute.” To process the vast amounts of
Fireman Bruce Thompson loads paper into a pulper in the waste processing room aboard USS Nimitz (CVN 68).
trash, the waste processing room has plenty of specialized equipment designed to efficiently dispose of the different kinds of waste. “We have a large pulper, which takes paper and soft foods,” said Fireman Bruce Thompson, one of the daytime supervisors in the waste processing room. “There’s a receiving tray at the top that our guys have to sift through, to make sure no unauthorized items go into the pulper.” After the paper and trash go in, the pulper mixes it with sea water and discharges the swill it creates overboard. Plastic is processed in a
completely different fashion. “First we sift through the plastic and send it through the shredder,” said Hamilton. “After that, it gets sent to the CMU (compression melting unit) where it melts and compresses the plastic into discs called pucks.” The CMUs on board heat the plastic between 300 and 400 degrees Farenheit to soften the plastic for compression and each puck takes about 20 to 30 minutes to make. “One or two full bags of plastic can make one puck,” said Thompson. “This makes them much easier to store until we can offload them when we pull into port.”
See TRASH page 3