Passenger Trains > Amtrak Recyclables in ARRIVE

I recently read Kummant's comments in ARRIVE magazine where he touted how Amtrak is trying to go "green" and be more environmentally friendly. What about all the trash that is being generated from the dining cars under Simplified Dining? This dining process must produce a tone of trash - all items are disposable etc.! I even remember reading an article about how Amtrak personnel were struggling to find space in the dumpster for all the trash produced by the dining car, and how the "trash" had certainly increased under the new long distance dining experience. Only Amtrak's Empire Builder and Auto Train still use dishwashers where plates are washed etc. Perhaps those Amtrak dishes used under Simplified Dining are "recyclable," or are of recyclable material, but are they properly recycled if loaded into general dumpsters?

Shhh... Hehe.

I agree 100% though...every large station stop during meal times I see the Chef throwing out several of those brown trash containers. Pretty sad.

I worked for Princess Cruises on the Midnight Sun Express rail tours as the onboard steward. I would only end up with about 1 good sized industrial strength sized garbage bag per coach for each sitting for the dining service. And that was for about 65 people in each car the choose to eat. We all had real glass and plateware with the silver ware, had a dishwasher on board that washed the crap out of everything and it was a quick turn around for the dishware to be cycled back into the dining. The only thing I would be mindful of is the greywater disposition. Youd have to use alot of biodegradable stuff in order to just dump all the crappy water out on the tracks, or have a seeminly large tank to store it all in.
My suggestion to the chef for hauling the garbage is to just toss it over board at the stations. Let the station clerks come out and pick em up. Thats what the Alaska railroad does anyways.

Don't forget the energy use of industrialized dish washers and the water consumed by such machines probably polutes just as much as some of stuff Amtrak trows out, you need to be industrial inviromentalist to figure out what polutes more.

> Amtrak trows out, ...


Are you from New York?

;-)

Nick Wrote:
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> > Amtrak trows out, ...
>
>
> Are you from New York?
>
> ;-)

Maybe Connecticut, though there are some New Englanders who believe Fairfield County could be annexed to New York....

toledopatch Wrote:
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> Nick Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > > Amtrak trows out, ...
> >
> >
> > Are you from New York?
> >
> > ;-)
>
> Connecticut, I think, though there are some New
> Englanders who believe Fairfield County could be
> annexed to New York....

It'll never happen now if Fairfax County wants Manhatten and the other borroughs we New York staters shall not object.

Im from New York(not the city) but lets get back to those enviromentaly friendly diswashers.
Lets see about 12Kw and a wateruse of 100 gallons per hour ???
so how much better would it be to carry 300 gallons of water on a food service car vs paperplates and such ????

ARR701 Wrote:
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> My suggestion to the chef for hauling the garbage
> is to just toss it over board at the stations. Let
> the station clerks come out and pick em up. Thats
> what the Alaska railroad does anyways.


That's what Amtrak does... the Car attendants, servers, and in general the Onboard Staff collectes together all the trash from the train, and at designated station casts the bags onto the platform... then the Station Services people come out in a golf cart, pick up all the garbage, and dump it into their dumpster.

The ARRIVE article also mentioned how Amtrak has gained efficiency with diesel fuel and electric power. Perhaps they could stretch and help to mediate the issue of what would seem to be a minor dishwasher in the scheme of things - as opposed to tons of trash bags being offloaded to an overloaded dumpster, as has often been reported on the Texas Eagle. Course doesn't the water of a dishwasher go into a retention tank, similar to the water situation in a sleeper? If not, water is more readily found than continually adding to landfills - if the Amtrak dining plastic ware is not sent to a recycle center. I've found the bags just tossed to the nearest dumpster. I don't know, I just found the ARRIVE article somewhat contradictory compared to what is done with long distance simplified dining service.

VIA Rail goes the extra mile to even recycle plastic cups and bottles/cans aboard the train - and make announcements on how to be conscious about your "garbage aboard the train." They've won (and are very proud of) many environmental related awards that seems less contradictory to me. And they have do have retention based tanks for their toilets.

With the Dishwasher it does not matter how efficient the engine is, a kilowatt is still a kilowatt.
and the water from dishwasher is considered greywater and is dumped right on the track, soap and food included.
and even if it went into a retentiontank it would need to go to a sewage treatment plant(Which uses energy)
Recycling is nice but with todays garbage facilities the garbage gets seperated anyway, if it comes in dumpster, black bag or blue bag, it all goes tru a processor.

Everybody just assumes that material put into "recycle" bins actually gets recycled but in truth a lot of it ends up in the landfill anyway due to various reasons such as availability of recycling plants and the market for specific recycled materials. While some materials (such as aluminum) are highly cost effective to recycle (and every Amtrak train I've been on has a bin for soda cans), the lower value stuff, like plastic and paper, isn't worth recycling if there isn't a nearby plant and consumers.

Outside of major population centers, I'd bet that recycling is mostly a "feel good" program and if you traced the trash, it would all end up in the same place. No, I don't have any evidence of that, just a suspicion. I have a hard time believing that it would be economically feasible to transport scrap paper and plastic any distance and still make a profit.