The Mobro 4000 was a barge owned by MOBRO Marine, Inc. made infamous in 1987 for hauling the same load of trash along the east coast of North America from New York City to Belize and back until a way was found to dispose of the garbage. During this journey, local press often referred to the Mobro 4000 as the " Gar-barge ".
20-547: In 1987, the City of New York found that it had reached its landfill capacity. The city agreed to ship its garbage to Morehead City , North Carolina , where there were plans to convert it into methane . On 22 March 1987, the tugboat Break of Day towed the barge Mobro 4000 and its cargo of over 3,100 tons (2,812 tonnes ) of trash. Chartered by entrepreneur Lowell Harrelson and Long Island mob boss Salvatore Avellino , it set sail on March 22 from Islip, New York , escorted by
40-475: A "stinky crater". After some research, they find a video that reveals the object to be a giant ball of garbage from Old New York, launched into space in 2052. After warning Mayor Poopenmayer, a plan is hatched to destroy the garbage ball. The Planet Express crew is sent on a mission to plant a bomb on the ball. Then, once activated, the bomb will be set to allow the crew twenty-five minutes to escape. Farnsworth also reminds them that if it blew up any time later,
60-407: A last-ditch effort to redeem himself, Farnsworth comes up with a second plan to save the city: launching a second ball of garbage to bounce against the first one and sending it flying into the sun. Fry leads the city to quickly generate a second ball of garbage, which is fired at the first garbage ball. The rocket flies into the air and hits the other garbage ball, which slingshots around planets into
80-471: A reverse SCUBA suit that allows fish to breathe water while walking about on land, then taunts Farnsworth over his invention from the previous year—the Deathclock. Mortified that he had previously presented the device and forgotten about it, Farnsworth hastily begins drawing on a napkin. He presents the drawing, which depicts a Smelloscope, a device that allows people to smell distant cosmic objects, but
100-622: A shortage of landfill space: almost 3,000 municipal landfills had closed between 1982 and 1987. It triggered much national public discussion about waste disposal, and may have been a factor in increased recycling rates in the late 1980s and after. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists , the Mobro 4000 incident was caused by a combination of poor decision making by local Islip public officials and short-term difficulties triggered by changing environmental regulations . A commemorative T-shirt
120-569: A song about the incident, "Junk Barge", written by Dave Trumfio , in her 1995 album To the Land of Milk and Honey . A children's book about the incident, Here Comes the Garbage Barge , by Jonah Winter , was published in 2010. Another, All That Trash: The Story of the 1987 Garbage Barge and Our Problem with Stuff , by Meghan McCarthy, was published in 2018. Morehead City, North Carolina Too Many Requests If you report this error to
140-527: A tip, flew by helicopter to the coast to investigate. Action News 5 Reporter Susan Brozek broke the story on the 6 p.m. news on 1 April 1987, and North Carolina officials began their own investigation, which resulted in an order for the Mobro to move on. As a result, the state of North Carolina refused to accept the waste. The barge then proceeded along the coast looking for another place to offload and continued to meet stiff resistance. After an 11-day delay,
160-534: Is humiliated when he smears the drawing. Back at Planet Express, Farnsworth invites everybody to see the Smelloscope that he had constructed last year and also forgotten about. Fry begins smelling objects around the Solar System and quickly discovers a foul-smelling meteor. After calculating its trajectory, Farnsworth announces that the object will collide with New New York City in 72 hours, reducing it to
180-565: The Fox network in the United States on 11 May 1999. The episode was written by Lewis Morton and directed by Susie Dietter . Ron Popeil guest stars in this episode as himself. Nancy Cartwright also has a brief cameo as a Bart Simpson doll. Much of the episode is a spoof of the 1998 film Armageddon ; however, instead of Earth being threatened by an asteroid , it is threatened by a giant ball of garbage. Professor Farnsworth invites
200-529: The Mobro made its way to its home port in Louisiana , but that state, too, declined the waste. Similarly, Alabama , three other states, and the nations of Mexico , Belize , and the Bahamas refused the load. The Mexican Navy denied it entrance to their waters. It made it as far south as Belize , again being rejected, before the operators abandoned the plan and returned to New York . Lowell Harrelson,
220-487: The tugboat Break of Dawn and carrying 3,168 tons (2,874 tonnes ) of trash headed for a pilot program in Morehead City, North Carolina , to be turned into methane . While it was in transit, a rumor spread that the 16 bundles of trash that contained hospital gowns, syringes and diapers was a contaminant that affected the entire load. The barge was docked at Morehead City , until a WRAL-TV news crew, acting on
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#1732783977282240-573: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.132 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 947676048 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:52:57 GMT A Big Piece of Garbage " A Big Piece of Garbage " is the eighth episode in the first season of the American animated television series Futurama . It originally aired on
260-486: The crew of Planet Express to join him at the Academy of Inventors' annual symposium , where inventors display their latest creations. He will be presenting his invention, the Deathclock, which displays the date of a person's death after that person's finger is stuck into the machine. At the symposium, the crew encounter one of Farnsworth's bitter former students, Professor Ogden Wernstrom . Wernstrom presents his invention,
280-500: The episode is a reference to the 1998 film Armageddon , in which a group of astronauts attempt to destroy an asteroid heading towards Earth with a warhead . It also references Mobro 4000 , a garbage barge that originated in New York and was rejected from multiple ports in 1987. The garbage ball contains Bart Simpson dolls that utter Bart's catchphrase "eat my shorts" to which Bender does, and later he would respond "mmm...shorts"
300-460: The explosion would cause garbage to rain across the entire Earth, killing millions. Unfortunately, after starting the bomb, they find out the Professor put the bomb's countdown display in upside down, and it actually only allows 52 seconds. The crew panics, and Bender throws the bomb into space to save them, where it explodes harmlessly. Wernstrom makes several demands before quickly leaving. In
320-405: The owner of the garbage, tried to negotiate for the Mobro to dock near Queens , whence the refuse would be carried back to Islip by trucks. Claire Shulman , the borough president of Queens, was not consulted, however; she obtained a temporary restraining order that forced the waste to stay at sea. The Mobro and its decaying cargo stayed off the shores of Brooklyn until July, when the vessel
340-499: The same way Homer Simpson does when he gets hungry. During the end credits, Kate Smith 's rendition of " We'll Meet Again " plays instead of the standard opening and closing theme music. Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an A−, stating, "More than anything else, 'A Big Piece Of Garbage' gives a taste of what’s to come. Other episodes will have more challenging, mind-boggling plots, and still others will find ways to move us more deeply than we thought possible from such
360-408: The sun, while the new ball flies out of the solar system. For saving the city from the garbage ball, Professor Farnsworth is given the inventor's award, which was confiscated from Wernstrom as punishment abandoning everyone. Leela 's concerns that the new garbage ball will return and destroy a future generation are quickly dismissed, as the new ball should not return for hundreds of years. The plot of
380-581: Was granted a federal anchorage in New Jersey . The court hearings ran until October, when it was agreed that the cargo should be incinerated in Brooklyn. The 430 tons of ash that remained from this process was added to the landfill in Islip. At the time, the Mobro 4000 incident was widely cited by environmentalists and the media as emblematic of the solid-waste disposal crisis in the United States due to
400-423: Was produced with the wording "L.I. Garbage Barge - World Tour '87" surrounding a cartoon image of the scow. The Swedish 1988 comedy film S.O.S. – En segelsällskapsresa features a garbage barge as a plot device , roaming the inner Stockholm Archipelago . The backstory of the garbage ball in the 1999 Futurama episode " A Big Piece of Garbage ", draws directly from this event. Singer Sally Timms included
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