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Person removes plastic stick from metal drum.
Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek
Hazardous waste technician Quinn Cherf checks a drum of hazardous waste to determine the amount of fuel versus water in the 55-gallon container. The ratio is important for meeting regulatory rules.

Season's effort focused on getting waste on annual resupply vessel

Quinn Cherf easily fits those requirements. Her first job in the USAP was as a dishwasher in 2007. In the Northern Hemisphere summers, she works at state and national parks on trail maintenance and other outdoors projects.

As one of the hazardous waste technicians, Cherf’s job requires not just physical stamina, as she commonly handles 55-gallon drums that can weigh up to 400 pounds, but an extreme eye to detail. Hazardous waste must be properly handled, labeled, packaged and shipped. That’s not just for safety reasons. Mishandling can result in big fines.

Several large boxes inside big building.
Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek
Waste Department personnel work in the Waste Barn.
Small boat in foreground with larger ship in background.
Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek
The Waste Department hazardous waste crew is also in charge of deploying a boom during fueling operations.
Cargo vessel unloads containers.
Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek
The cargo vessel that is used to return waste to the United States from Antarctica.

“I feel like it’s a lot of responsibility,” she says.

“The majority of items we get are household items that you wouldn’t necessarily remember are hazardous,” she adds, such as batteries, fluorescent light tubes, and oil and fuel from vehicles.

“We do open and check every drum that comes through,” Cherf says, “because if it isn’t what it says it is, and it gets to the States, there are big fines associated with that.”

The department’s raison d’etre usually comes at the end of every January or beginning of February. That’s when an ocean-going cargo vessel arrives filled with a year’s worth of supplies. The “wasties” are responsible for backloading the ship with a year’s worth of garbage, most of it carefully loaded into 20-foot containers called milvans.

“Our job is to reduce transportation costs,” VanMatre says. “We have to make the trash fit into a smaller box, so that we use fewer milvans, fewer trucks and fewer drivers.”

The weeklong-and-then-some vessel operation – a slow-motion convoy of trucks moving through clouds of Ross Island’s volcanic dust to the ice pier and back again – is the culmination of the summer’s work flow.

“We’re moving it all toward being in some sort of container that can be put in a milvan to be shipped off continent,” notes Anne Hellie, a first-year recycling technician in Waste Operations who also leads the department’s resale efforts by organizing materials that could be sold at auction in the United States.

“As long as it’s not complete garbage, we’ll take it and try to find a home for it,” she explains. Some things have value just by virtue of coming from Antarctica. For example, Hellie recently salvaged a shiny, 1950s-era shop vacuum that despite missing its hoses might be deemed of value at auction.

The wasties also find other uses for the trash that comes their way. An annual Christmas musical, hosted by the department, makes creative use of discarded cardboard, packing materials and a number of other items that will eventually leave in milvans on the ship. This past year’s show, featuring a Nutcracker theme, included costumes with skirts made of bubble wrap and life-sized toy soldiers fashioned out of waste plywood and cardboard.

“We work really hard, but it’s fun,” Katch says. “You have to have a sense of humor to be in this department. I think that’s part of the reason you come back.”

Still, when it’s time to go, it’s time to go, according to VanMatre. “When the boat gets here, you’re working every day until it’s done. It’s cold, and you work so much. Nobody in Waste is ever melancholy about leaving at the end of the season.”

But they’re always happy to come back the next.

“I really like the hectic schedule, even though at the end we’re all exhausted,” Fey says. “It’s a real satisfying job.”