Outfitting Your Boat The Green Way - The First Steps
Where do I begin?
If you thought the expensive part of boating was going to be buying your boat you are almost right. Keep your checkbook handy for all the cool stuff that you need to enjoy your time on the water. Don’t panic here, but most serious sailors will tell you that equipping a boat to go cruising usually costs about a third of what you spent on the vessel itself. For those of us who are not heading off to Tahiti anytime soon the cost will be lower of course, but there is still plenty to do.
Before we get too specific let me reiterate a concept from the early days of this blog. Being green is not cheap in the traditional sense of the word. As you are confronted by the dollar cost of the gear you need to go boating please remember the true cost of what you end up buying.
In our store we sell a lot of traditional nautical equipment- brass lanterns, barometers, and clocks, stainless steel, bronze, and aluminum hardware and all sorts of similar stuff. We are often asked how such products can be considered “green.” After all, there is no such thing as organic metal.
There is however, a significant difference between the environmental impact made by the production, distribution, use, and ultimate disposal of one high quality item compared to the impact of buying a new, cheap version of the same item every few seasons.
To illustrate, let's consider the environmental impact from the buying decisions of two boaters. Both need a new hand held compass, nothing fancy, just a reliable navigation tool every boater should have. Boater 1 buys a cheap $5.00 plastic compass. Boater 2 buys a nice brass and glass compass for $25.00.
From a dollars and cents standpoint Buyer 1 is probably thinking he can afford to replace his $5.00 compass 5 times before he spends what Boater 2 did in the first place. Looked at as a simple math problem Boater 1 is right. When you examine the true cost to the planet of his decision, however, Boater 1 will have a dramatically higher negative environmental impact than Boater 2.
First off, let's look at the production of both compasses. While it does require more energy to melt and fabricate brass and glass vs. plastic the by-products that result from the production of plastic are much more harmful and persistent than those from brass and glass. Basic minerals, heat, and knowledge are what you need to make brass and glass. Complex petroleum-based chemical compounds, energy, and knowledge go into making plastic. Science is just now starting to unravel the long term damage caused by the numerous toxins that are released in the manufacturing of plastic. The creation of the popular plastic PVC ( poly vinyl chloride) releases and creates this neat little poison called dioxin. Dioxin exposure has been linked to birth defects, inability to maintain pregnancy, decreased fertility, reduced sperm counts, endometriosis, diabetes, learning disabilities, immune system suppression, lung problems, skin disorders, lowered testosterone levels and much more. Perhaps the scariest aspect of plastic's persistence in the environment is that everyone on the planet, no matter how remote they may be, now has measurable levels of chlorinated toxins in their bloodstream.
To get back to true costs for a moment, do you really think the health care problems, clean up costs, and numerous other negatives caused in the production of that $5.00 compass are not being paid for by someone? I don't intend to turn this into an economics thesis, but I think it is safe to say we can add $10.00 to the true cost of the plastic compass from these factors alone.
Now let's assume Boater 1 accidentally sits on his plastic compass and breaks it, or it just goes over the side. How do you measure the true cost of a piece of plastic that has become a permanent part of the ecosystem? For those folks who don't know, plastic is not biodegradable. Every piece of plastic ever made exists today in one form or another. In fact, one of the very first pieces of plastic ever made was installed on a WWII Japanese fighter plane. A sizeable chunk was recently found floating at sea, with serial numbers clearly visible. Perhaps some day bacteria will evolve that will find a way to eat this stuff, but conservative scientific estimates peg the time frame for such a possibility at 100,000 years or more in the future. To keep things simple let's add another $5.00 to the true cost of making Mother Nature deal with an eternal plastic compass.
If Boater 2 loses his compass over the side it won't rot in a month, but it will eventually without releasing any neurotoxins or other equally awful stuff.
Now Boater 1 needs to replace his lost plastic compass. A drive to the store to buy a second compass doesn't sound like much, but how much damage was caused producing that second compass and shipping it from China? Another $5.00? Lose a few more and it is easy to see that the cheap compass cost the planet much more than the brass version ever will.
Now I know there are holes to be poked in this little exercise, but at the very least I hope it makes people see past the myth that the cheap plastic compass only cost $5.00.
If my analogy doesn't sell you on why you should outfit your boat with quality gear, all you have to do to convince yourself is spend some time on the water. Almost all the junk floating around where it has no business being is cheap, disposable crap. Chunks of Styrofoam and an endless assortment of plastic everything can be seen bobbing in the waves of every Ocean and on the shores of almost every body of water boaters frequent.
When the time comes to shell out your hard earned dollars for gear it will be only natural that your conscience wrestles with your practical side. Just try to imagine the life cycle of what you are buying and remember, your initial expense is not the only measure of what something costs.
This does not mean you have to spend top dollar on everything your boat requires. For some things you do not want to be cheap - safety gear for instance, but my point is that you should not buy junk. Look for gear that will last, look for gear that does minimal harm when it is made, and look for gear that will cause minimal harm if it goes over the side. Besides doing the right thing for the planet, how cool will it be to hand your grandson the brass compass you used on one of your adventures, even if you never really had any?
