NATURETECH: Foam Wood... the alternative to toxic chemicals...

I remember slapping these types of particle board siding on new houses.

It was only primed on the exterior side and if you'd spit on the unprimed side a lump would swell up by the time I'd go to the outhouse and back.

We claulk the butt joints with standard cheap-o latex claulk.

They told us all about how it came with a 40yr guarantee by a "triple AAA gold level etc insurance".

Now its all about "class action" and I'm assuming about 2cents on the dollar max to the cost of replacing with something that works.https://www.google.com/search?q=par...utf-8#q=hardboard siding class action lawsuit


Now I'm thinking good old aluminum canoes and runabouts are probably the most environmentally friendly in the long run. They seem to last forever with zero maintenance and it takes something really bad to put a hole in one, and even the repair doesn't involve a multi-stage toxic waste program like WEST or fiberglass. Plus the whole boat can be 100% recycled easily with scrap metal buyers all over the world. IIRC even the initial electric-power heavy production of aluminum is always done where electric power is cheap (and hopefully now clean).

 

As BPR said, surely durable boats are one of the best ways to use energy and materials - especially when labour costs are often such a high proportion of the financial costs.

The average person in my country makes about 2000kg of garbage per year. My 28'er weighs about the same as one years garbage, and yet she has been providing people with joy for about 40 years. Of course, her maintenance involves the use of epoxy, anti-fouling etc but most human interactions involve consumption. In my country, the drop in boating activity has been paralleled by a rise in people driving fuel-guzzling 4WDs for weekend fun. A two ton 4WD/SUV used for weekend bush driving will harm the environment much more over its fairly short lifespan than a boat would if it provided the same amount of leisure fun for the same number of people.

As a gut feeling, a durable boat comes out well ahead of other recreational equipment, particularly considering that many modern hulls seem to have an almost infinite lifespan and spars last for decades.

The real revolution to make sailing green could come when people stop trying to introduce new boats and classes like Skip R wants. There are thousands of boats mouldering in harbours, partly because people are obsessed by materialism and its narrow definitions of "progress". Surely the really green thing would be to work on ways to revive those boats and get them being used in an environmentally friendly way, rather than trying to create a development class of disposable boats as Skip R wants?

EDIT - No, I don't really want to stop the production of new boats and types - but it does seem to be illogical to be trying to get people to start building new boats and then at the same time to complain about the environmental cost of building new boats. Skip, if you want to be green then why don't you get involved in building the classic multi fleet?