TikTok User Living In Antarctica Shows The Extra Effort It Takes To Take Out Trash

When the services we enjoy in our lives get routine enough, it can be easy to forget how important they are and how much harder life gets when the process behind them isn't as simple as we're used to.

And it's hard to think of an everyday matter that applies to more than the simple act of taking out the garbage. While I'm fortunate enough not to have lived through a garbage strike, I'm sure that nothing makes one appreciate their city's sanitation department more than the intolerable disgust that comes when it piles up.

But depending on where you are, even a system that's working as intended can be a lot more involved than any of us would like. And based on one revealing TikTok, that definitely seems to be the case in Antarctica.

Although his TikTok account once documented his world travels, Josiah Horneman now uses it to give his followers some insight about what it's like to live in Antarctica.

That's because Horneman — who goes by @joespinstheglobe on the platform — told Insider that he's now a physician assistant at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

And on April 5, he made a video showing what each of the station's 40 crew members have to deal with when they take out the trash.

As he expresses in the clip, he found himself taking a dumpster full of trash on a -70 degree Fahrenheit day through a vertical tower known as "the beer can."

In this building is a cargo elevator that Horneman rides down several floors before pushing the trash through a series of hallways before he reaches a massive corridor known as the Logistics Arch.

This place is where the majority of the station's frozen food and other long-term supplies are found, but it's also where that trash needs to be sorted.

While sorting landfill waste from recycling is pretty standard for many households, it's particularly important in Antarctica.

According to the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, that's because the treaty that each nation with operations in Antarctica signs forbids leaving waste on the continent, which leaves nations relying on their own regulations to store and dispose of it. It also holds that any materials containing PCB chemicals can't be introduced to Antarctica at all.

In Horneman's words, "We try to be as renewable as we can with our materials but sometimes, there's just waste you can't get rid of."

Once that waste is sorted in the Logistics Arch, it is compacted into pallets and remains there until the summer, when it's warm enough to transport it elsewhere.

Since this trash is brought to the Logistics Arch several times a week, that leaves the crew with a pretty long wait before it can be brought out of the facility.

The disposal process varies from nation to nation but Horneman told Insider that in the case of his station, the trash is either flown off the premises or hauled via specialized sleds pulled by a tractor to the U.S. Antarctic Program's headquarters, McMurdo Station.

In the latter case, the journey sees the tractor and sleds pull through snow and ice for 1,030 miles before it finally reaches the station. Once it's gathered there, it is eventually transported to New Zealand.

While that may sound like an existence that would eventually get unbearably smelly, Horneman said that this isn't usually the case thanks to the extremely low temperatures.

h/t: Insider

Filed Under: