Voyage of the Mobro 4000 | Retro Report | The New York Times
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2013
- The first of our new Retro Report series revisits the 1987 voyage of a barge loaded with New York garbage. It became an international fiasco, but foreshadowed the modern recycling movement.
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Voyage of the Mobro 4000 | Retro Report | The New York Times
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Someone needs to make a comedy movie about this whole debacle with that Southern man as the main character, he is a hoot.
4:27 Enter the villian of the story Paul Miller...
Brad Pitt should play the lead with Charlize Theron as his love interest and if 'Alien' director Ridley Scott comes on board it would definitely be a winner.
A barge full of garbage... so... a garbarge?
xxkittyscratch496xx this comment deserves all the glory the internet could possibly bestow.
And name the barge "GAR"!
Get out!
xxkittyscratch496xx well played 😂😂
I support the us of “Mobro” as a unit of measurement
100 mobrits = 1 mobro
A shitload = a mobro
I lol'd for reals.
I'm really loving these Retro Reports.
So THIS is where the idea for that "Futurama" episode came from!
Was thinking the same.
Same thoughts here.
Same here. Both Wikipedia articles for the episode and Mobro 4000 reference each other, but you really have to go find that piece of information.. And that's a quite old episode
thank goodness they didn't get over their sexual inhibitions
"They had no one who knew anything about bawging in gawbage. So they come to me, and they ax me could I bawge gawbage for 'em?" - Tommy Gesuale
Rozae Pareza Tom is a very good guy
Haha Love the NY accent....Marisa Tomei !
You stack a bunch of garbage on a barge and then you push it where you want it to go. Oh, and you need a mobster to, you know, don't ask no questions.
8:07 Too much emphasis has been placed on recycling and not enough on the first two of the three R's. Reduce and reuse. We should be more focused on reducing what we consume altogether. Recycling should be a last resort.
Great concept.. in theory 😕 But would it be practical on a large scale?
I agree, however, from my point of view "reuse" is not super viable in an urban environment. Plastic being the worst IMO. Here in rural America, we use plastic jugs for plenty of things. Buy fertilizer, pre mix it in gallon jugs. make floats that hold fishing lines, etc. In a 200sqft apartment, there aren't many opportunities to do that sort of thing, and the most progressive movement I know of is reusable shopping bags. A dialogue country (world?) wide needs to be opened, or else we may begin to resemble earth as depicted in 'Wall E'.
Zero waster here. Yes yes!
9:36 Garbage Historian Sounds like a pretty niche title!
thats what i was thinking
Normally they are called archeologists. But this guy studies 'new' garbage.
Who else thought Harrelson’s wife was his daughter?
His wife looks like a druggie after money lol
grand daughter... and the dog has a dress... enough said lol
She’s Bolivian. He met her doing business down there and he sponsors unprivileged kids. Just read an article about him. Google the dude. I wish him happiness and good fortune 🔮
more like granddaughter 🤭
Lowell Harrison is the most American I've ever seen in a person, even when he was humiliated for making money disposing of a major environmental issue, he didn't just collapse into himself, he went to go and make money doing another thing. That's entrepreneurship.
11:32 Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger
RIGHT?
How dare you!!! Their love is as pure any other (as long as the will and next of kin paperwork is up to date)
Was it the arm poodle that gave her away?
The second i saw that i was like "WOAH she looks like his granddaughter."
Love at first sight
I work for the company that towed that barge. Dawn Services. Iv worked for a few years on that actual tug. The Break Of Dawn. Its still in service to this day, but we dont haul trash any more lol
@10:18 “getting garbage out of New York is still a money maker”, dude drives away in a Cadillac 😎
"moving garbage out of New York is still a money maker"
*Drives a Cadillac through the landfill*
😂😂😂😂
11:32 Lol his wife is like 30 years old and he's like 80.
MJ can u imagine when he ask his wife to sit on his face how his voice sounds?
Hope he isn't paying premium rates on that used up equipment
So ballet. #lifegoals
MJ *baller
She looks like she was born AFTER the Mobro fiasco.
The sad reality is that "recycling" means shipping it to poor countries to put it out of sight out of mind.
Tony soprano would have known what to do with it
I can’t stop watching these! Very well done NYT
“Can’t somebody else do it?”- Homer Simpson-Sanitation Commissioner
Pat Aker my life’s motto.
from 84 to 86 we were back hauling garbage from NYC to the Midwest to dump in refrigerated trailers that were also used to haul meat into NYC, even thought the trailers were steamed out before loading meat the idea of it ended the garbage back haul and the garbage barge came right after the hauling ended.
the response of people to this kind of thing is absolutely fascinating.
I remember this; very interesting--thanks for posting!
wow..i remember this event like it was yesterday.... 25 plus years ago
They should have dumped the garbage on Carolina because how is dumping garbage on garbage going to make any difference.
Replace that with Alabama or Mississippi and you're spot on
This was the big news in 1987 man I miss the good all days Lmao
Now, stories 10x more impactful are buried everyday.
Mr Harrelson talks like the voice of A Fallout character.
Bethesda could use his voice 😂
Very good back story.
A man ahead of his time, which included a young, hot wife,and he's rich. I give him 100% credit. Half of you guys out there only WISH you could be him.
Growing up in the northeast in the 1950s and 60s our township had a mandatory program in which all metals and glass items were just 1 of 3 weekly pick-ups; I don't know its destination but it was not the landfill. Another pick-up was newspapers, magazines, etc all of which went to a local manufacturer (who ran that pick-up as part of the business) that recycled it into a wide variety of products - acoustic wall panels, ceiling tiles, and (of all things) ashtrays! The company is still in business the last time I checked. The last pickup was for refuse that went to the landfill which did have an incinerator at one point. I assumed every locale had a similar way of handling waste; it was surprising to find out otherwise.
that’s actually a great idea, was this common back then?
In about 1987 every supermarket started packaging virtually everything that used to be sold loose
Here in Australia, it's always been a thing that we have one smaller garbage bin (that can be optioned to a larger size if you need, the council will come around and swap the bins around for you, but regardless of size, it's collected every week) and one recycling bin, every household in the country does it this way. Typically, your garbage bin is picked up once a week, and recycling, once every fortnight. You put the recycling out with the garbage every alternate week, basically. Forgot which week that is? Either look in the street, or look at your bin. If the recycling is only half full, it's probably not your week. Really simple.
However, some commercial places go one step further, as do shopping malls and the like. Garbage and recycling is the *minimum* but some places have three recycling bins - paper/cardboard, glass, plastic. In some states, you are even given a 10 cent refund for every single can or bottle that you hand in to waste collection centres - enough that some people can actually make a killing doing this. The system works brilliantly, and the best part is, is it takes zero extra effort to do. The recycle is next to the garbage, all you have to do is think about what goes where. Pizza boxes, coke bottles, recycling. You've successfully created *zero* trash from your feed just then. Recycling does consume more power, but the trade-off is that in doing so, it dilutes the need for virgin materials, which means that a given quantity goes further, it's a winning combination.
Also, some of our landfills, including my local one, have had biomass power generation for years. It's only a few megawatts, but it's enough to run a good portion of a very large town, and again, it dilutes our need for coal fired stations. The less fossil fuels we use, the better. Not just for the environment, I'm not having that argument today, but because one day that fuel *will* run out. If we can lower our use of those fuels by substituting with others, biomass, solar, wind, water, nuclear, and even ethanol in the fuel, that all works towards using just slightly less fossil fuels, slightly arresting demand for more of the stuff, making it ever so slightly cheaper, and also making our reserves last slightly longer. Ignoring the environment, it just makes sense in the long term, that little things we do now, do add up later. Every killowatt that's not from coal, is a kilowatt saved that *can* be derived from coal somewhere/sometime else.
Moon Moon we have a similar setup here now too. I've seen some west coast cities also have a compost bin to go along with the recycling and trash bins
Moon Moon I live in Minneapolis and my boyfriend and I have one trash can, one bin for glass and plastic recycling and another for paper. We usually do take out the trash once a week (food scraps mostly, I wish we could have a composting pile) and the recycling less often.
In out metro area, there are a lot of both trash and recycling bins next to each other. The main problem is trying to expand recycling and composting out into the greater part of the state, where my relatives live. Counties have to deal with their own waste and recycling and might not be able to recycle all things because of budgeting issues.
Actually the recycling goes out every week and garbage and green waste on alternating weeks every fortnight
Can’t they throw it in the sun like in “Futurama”?
Dakota Rain or just shoot it into space honestly 🤷🏼♀️
Did i miss the fact? - being : how many days crap was on board the rollaround barge?
The Mobro 4000 traveled a long distance! From Long Island (NY) to NC to Big Easy (NOLA) to YUC to Belize to Cuba and then all the way to a zone that used to be called Babylon?
A conventional federal government wouldn't let a contractor travel that far! It's seems like a "nautical voyage" without any refreshments.
'Twas way longer than Christopher Columbus' voyage!
Gotta love the entrepreneurial spirit of that first guy.
The poop train is the 2018 edition of this. A train full of sewage from New York that's rejected and become stranded somewhere in the southern us
perfect storyline item
I wish you good luck ol boy, keep on keepin on, you call, we haul, that's all.
Damn, that was his wife? I thought it was his daughter. This guy done good.
Anyone else see the potential for putting on some masts and sails on this thing? 10 cannon on each side would make this thing formidable.
This can be gasified and recycled into fuels, that means take the fuel from the burn and make electricity.. Two product, Well tree, in fact, the sale of the carbon that could be used in making carbon-based products, like batteries and electronics and carbon fibre and a lot more....
Garbage disposal in every home to dissolve food waste ending up in landfills. Makes it easier to separate food waste from plastic and paper.
just give the epa some money and theyll let you dump it in the ocean...
I'd laugh
But recycling ends up in Asia
Ocean, open burns and open pits less than ten percent is recycle
Not fair to the sea life though,its our mess
Tropical vermin??!?! I take offense to that as a Floridian. Your practically calling my whole state tropical vermin.
It's true, don't deny it
If you elected Rick Scott as a senator and Ron DeSantis as governor, you're vermin.
Basically yes
Saw the first 10 seconds and knew the mob were involved.
Where's the mobro now?
+SemperFidelisTyrannosaurus probably has been scrapped, like all barges, they die eventually
I think she sank a few years latter.
The steel from her hull got recycled into shrimp forks.
And, are being used at the poshest New York restaurants today.
Jetta Driver sources please.
Holeyok mass they have a huge mall built on their old dump and it had nothing but the ground caving in for years the parking lot has huge hole all sunkin in
I'll bet Jimmy Hoffa was in there
Consumer goods especially packaging should be taxed to fund disposal through incineration and the cost of recycling resources. The tax would be similar to a bottle deposit.
I googled Lowell Harrelson and "wife" was the first option then "Bolivia" lol. We all went by to find a pic of her but nothing! lol :)
Composting should be more popular
The indigent dead are taken to the landfill, stacked on top of each other, where they are eaten by rats!
Re use should be more popular
The man who invented plastic bags made them because they were better for the environment than paper and they were reusable
He always carried a few squished up in a pocket or in his car
It was everybody else who started throwing them into the trash
"Tropical vermin"
Twenty years later it is pushed into containers after it goes through a recycled plant and sent oversea
Tropical vermin 😂😂😂
Where are the tropical varmint going to come from if it was never aloud to make port lol
Green Peace's most successful ad campaign and it only cost maybe $100 in materials.
Remember when this was on futurama
I worked in this industry. Sal was infamous.
I thought he was walking his grandaughter at the end of the video but it happen to be the wife lol!
I’ll say this, she’s not a gold-digger & he’s not stupid. They look like they have fun & laugh a lot together.
So now it’s 6 years later, I’ve never heard of the methane burner, our regional landfill may use it. But we do burn(incinerate) some in our waste to.energy plant. The solution (incinerate) was right in front of him. Duh!
XD my mom told me about the Long Island garbage barge
Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now brought me here!
It wasn't a bad idea he had the financial backing, he had the barge, he had the place to dump it but gummit got involved and made an issue where there wasn't one and the media sensationalized into the sun. Garbage is hauled out to other states all the time and the townships that take it in make a sizable chunk a change. Feel bad for the guy. There he is on his last legs making one last push for glory and some how he manages to put it all together only to be walled, humiliated, and ridiculed. To add insult to injury it's a huge business now.
Its a good thing it dident accidentally get lost in a storm .i though same thing try recycling.
I take out the trash on Tuesdays but please don't call me a garbage man--I prefer the term sanitary engineer
I love the evening news anchors telling us that we are running out of places to get rid of our garbage. But wait, the energy from garbage will be relied upon so heavily, that you'll hear the same anchors saying, "The nation is running out of garbage".
What do you do for a living? “Oh, I’m a garbage historian”
I love that mans accent
Before the Kardashians, this was our nation's worst crsis dealing with trash.
2600 Mobro's a year of shipped out garbage. Can't it be mixed with cement and turned into building blocks and unbreakable solar roof tiles?
The closure of small local dump sites remains the greatest environmental disaster yet to happen in developed countries around the planet. Simply closing an sealing the tops of these dumps DID NOT remove the long term danger of leachate contamination to local ground water. It simply delayed the problem by decades.
Large regional dump sites present three major problems:
created a massive waste disposal industry that was profoundly antagonistic towards local waste redirection initiatives: Individuals, local collectives and private industry interested in retrieving specific waste streams from the source
created a massive bulk unsorted waste transport industry that consumes significant amounts of highly polluting diesel, and is a vector for long term spillage of leachate onto roads, where it evaporates and is blown into residential areas.
Created super dumps that are impossible to police, that rely on polymer linings to contain leachate. Exactly the sort of materials easily damaged and punctured by heavy earth moving equipment. These layers are vulnerable to the intrinsic conditions of a landfill operation, just as polymer coated rebar was vulnerable to the intrinsic conditions of a large building site.
In short, these barriers will leak sooner or later, but now they are being used to contain huge amounts of leachate in this mega-landfill sites. Yes, a lot of this leachate is collected and processed, but the total scale of these landfills means that only a small leak will have major environmental consequences for local ground water quality.
That twang
so how much was the profit?
"so, what do you do?"
i'm a garbage historian
They made sure to say at age 78 right when Harold was walking with his daughter aged wife with the poodle 🤣🤣🤣👌
MOBRO.....You should have tossed that $6.00 hair piece in with the rest of the garbage!
1:20 song?
5:18 is exactly whats wrong.
+Lo2us "nothing that was truly hazardous"
Who with 2 good eyes would see garbage and welcome it😂🤣
Funny how grand dreams and plans are crushed by a single moment. A bedpan, and the party is over. Was it hospital or not?? irrelevant.
Ok but seriously what the problem with putting medical waste in a landfill?
Why didn’t they just dump it offshore? Seems stupid to take it to a landfill when it’s already on a barge
This is hilarious.
8:25 I call bullish, crackheads are the reason recycling went up lmao
OK so it's 30 yrs later. Question what stuff would be the trash on it now? Cellphones used for less than a year ? Junk made in China ?
Should have hauled that garbage out to the square middle of the Gulf Stream and dumped it!
In the future garbage will run our DeLorean’s. 🤖
Do they dump it into the ocean anymore?
Yet another case of, it doesn't matter until it affects me.
You can't honestly believe their are no rats on that barge.
While LATER believing that rats from other places had gotten on it and using that as an attempt to deny it from returning to the point of origin.
She's gonna be bringing him his bed pan
On Aprils fools day? Interesting . Humour much
That barge load looks like a homeless camp.
His WIFE?? You meant his granddaughter, right? Lol
Why didnt they just sink the barge into the ocean? We seem to have no issues with that nowadays.
Put it in space or the ocean as long as I don't have to look at it
wonder why that mob boss killed those garbage collectors 🧐
The most watched load of garbage in the memory of man ...
The people need to stop geting evey thing in somuch packaging its nuts when u go to store a few days after u eat and open every thing how much trash u have its nuts just going to work if i dont throw every thing away in my car from meals its nuts to much rappers and pakaging i only take a bag at store it i realy need it