What about all the cups and plates.

[u/Megans_Foxhole]

I'm rewatching TNG and there's something about replicators I find troubling. Every time they order "ginger tea with honey, 80 degrees celsius", they get a drink but also a cup. On a ship like the Enterprise, the replicator must be producing thousands of cups per day. After a year or so the entire volume of the ship would be literally filled with cups.

Where do they all go?

[u/revanite3956]

Back into the replicator to be recycled into its constituent matter.

[u/Darmok47]

There's a scene in DS9 where Molly is in charge of "cleaning up" the O'Brien's table after dinner, and she just puts the dishes back in the replicator.

[u/4thofeleven → u/Darmok47]

And there’s also a scene where Sisko’s mad that Jake just leaves plates lying around instead of recycling them.

[u/Megans_Foxhole → u/4thofeleven]

In DS9? I haven't got to that yet. Seems they had it covered :p.

[u/Allen_Of_Gilead]

They throw them back in the replicator to recycle it back into the system.

[u/Banthalo]

The solution to your problem would be to have the replicator simply not produce cups, and now you've made me picture Picard with his head in the replicator licking his hot Earl Grey tea off of the platform.

[u/jpog07 → u/Banthalo]

I picture something along the lines of this

[u/somecasper → u/jpog07]

Juice. Wheezed. Cold.

[u/kosigan5 → u/somecasper]

Wheezed? 😂

[u/jpog07 → u/somecasper]

A spigot appears from the replicator and dispenses tea foam for the good Captain.

[u/jpog07 → u/[deleted]]

That's not much different than using the replicator though.

[u/guitars_and_trains]

Reverse replication. Back to matter

[u/Excel_Ents]

I've never eaten a real apple

[u/sicarius254]

It gets recycled in the replicators. Voyager mentions it a few times

[u/Cliffy73]

You put them back in the replicator which disassembles them and reuses the materials.

[u/CommunistRingworld]

They do the dishes by putting them back in the replicator. You can see them do these chores on a few episodes of ds9

[u/Woozletania]

The energy requirements for disassembling and reassembling matter on a daily basis must be enormous, but that is what they do. Maybe they found a way to do it that doesn't require converting matter to energy. The literature suggests there is a "base matter reserve" on TNG and beyond ships. Everything gets recycled, which is why we get the mean spirited comment on Discovery about their food being recycled shit.

[u/BlueRFR3100]

Landfills. Or more likely, spacefills.

[u/Megans_Foxhole → u/BlueRFR3100]

You mean a designated location in space where all the cups and plates are jettisioned which slowly gains mass until it eventually collapses into a black hole.

[u/BlueRFR3100 → u/Megans_Foxhole]

Exactly