What is Green Boating?
Sunday, January 13th, 2008What is Green Boating?
These days the term “green” is pretty fashionable. From cars to cleaning products, everybody is coming out with green versions of something or other. A way of life that was once associated with society’s fringe elements has worked its way into the most upscale neighborhoods and company board rooms. Automobiles that cost twice what a schoolteacher makes in a year are heading home from grocery stores and farmers markets full of organic vegetables, phosphate-free soap, and fair-trade clothing. Corporate America is realizing that acting green, and probably more importantly, being perceived as green might actually be profitable.
This is a good thing.
I think it is safe to say that the move towards environmentally friendly products and practices is not only alive and well, but gaining ground. The fact that a relatively boring industry like groceries has seen a 20% plus increase in the sale of organic items in the last few years is just one indicator that the movement is entering the mainstream. There is still a long way to go, of course, but like so many changes in societal behavior that are driven by the fact that they are the right thing to do, it is safe to say we are heading in the right direction.
How quickly we solve the problems brought on by mankind’s choices over the last century or so is the big question. It is one thing to be aware of a problem, and quite another to actually work to solve it through deeds.
“Green Boating” is about solving the problem. For too long now our planet’s waterways have been neglected. Raw sewage, chemical toxins, eternal plastic, and even nuclear waste have been dumped in our rivers and Ocean over the past century to the point that our aquatic treasures are in big trouble.
This shameful practice is really nothing new; almost every major city in history sprung up near the water. Egyptian dumped their trash in the Nile, Romans used the river Tiber as a sewer and a graveyrad, Londoners fouled the Thames, and so on throughout history.
The unique appeal of dumping trash in the water is that your junk usually passes out of sight rather quickly. The current whisks it away, tides pull it out to sea, and stuff sinks. Nowhere is the old cliché, “out of sight, out of mind”, more applicable than in describing mankind’s attitude towards water pollution.
For most of history, Mother Nature could deal with mankind’s trash disposal methods. As disgusting as it may have been to smell any major metropolitan river in mid-summer two hundred years ago, given enough time, Nature could clean things up. After all, the trash that found its way into these waters was almost exclusively biodegradable; animal and human waste, bodily remains, plant materials, fabric, wood, etc… These were the days before plastic, industrial chemicals, and all the other neat stuff we live with today. With plenty of bacteria and other natural processes in place the stinkiest waterways could heal themselves if they had enough time.
Not anymore.
Most of the modern world’s miracle products that find their way into the water do not break down in a very friendly way, if they break down at all. Despite marketing friendly words on your soap bottles like “biodegradable” or “earth friendly”, most modern cleaning products not only persist in the water for years, many of them may actually alter the sexual development of wildlife and humans too. Heavy metals like copper have been used for years to make bottom paint for all types of vessels. As this stuff sloughs off and falls to the seafloor it does not just magically go away. The plastic bucket you accidently dropped over the side while washing your boat will be in the water in one form or another FOREVER.
As technology has evolved, our ability to cause irreparable environmental harm has done the same. Unless your time on the water is spent on a bamboo raft or a birch bark canoe, chances are the products you use to enjoy boating are adding to the problem. Greenboatblog and www.greenboatstuff.com hope to help change that.
The shortsightedness we humans have had regarding our waterways needs to change. When I think of the out of sight, out of mind way of doing things it reminds me of dealing with children. A young child who is not able to fully appreciate right from wrong has no trouble blaming their mistakes on an imaginary friend or a sibling who wasn’t in the room. The little kid who breaks the cookie jar and feels no remorse when they cover it up with the kitchen rug is acting a lot like the boater who looks over his shoulder as he “accidently” tosses his trash over the side.
It is time to stop acting like children. The stakes have changed. The repercussions of our actions today go far beyond making the old swimming hole a little ripe in August. Every day countless boat owners are causing harm to the environment that is very much avoidable. If you put just a few green boating ideas into practice, the world will be a little bit better off. By simply acting like adults instead of children, we can make it possible for future generations of people and wild things to truly enjoy this big blue planet.
To get back to the question posed, the answer to “What is green boating?” is far from simple. To some, green boating means abandoning technology completely and letting the wind fill your sails or your arms pull your oars. For others it involves taking the time to question how they run their ship and deciding to do things in a more environmentally friendly way.
At the heart of it, doing anything “green” requires you to look at your actions and how they affect the world around you. When it comes to spending time on the water all you need to do to be green is to consider how the things you do and the products you use may impact the stuff you are floating on.
Common sense, a little education, and applying the Golden Rule to Mother Nature is all you need to get started.
