recycling composite boat

Sinking your "toys" when you become tired of their cost and maintenance is a poor way to present the environment to future generations.

The only way to control this personal disregard for the marine environment is thru a punishing registration tax that enables the state to take over responsibility when boat owners like CDK lack basic environmental education, don't give a dam or can no longer muster the effort ,nor financial power to dispose of their piece of summer fun plastic.

 

Michael, if you would, please explain how it is superior to burn and make the warmers cry or dump it in a landfill. I have dumped everything from cars and boats to a piece of stove pipe, which made a wonderful house for octopus. One thing you may not be able to see through your mioptic vision is that the limiting factor on survivability for many marine creatures, octopodes in particular, is available cover. You see, an octopus is a cephalopod like a nautilus - but without a shell. As it grows, it has to move from one nook to another, or as it hunts, for safety often at night, it goes home only to find another has squatted in its residence. The limiting factor on octopodes is the available amount of cover - a vast majority of these creatures die from predation because they are can't find a suitable home before they are found for dinner. Of course, one wouldn't want to sink a fish house where it will wash in a storm surge or where it can be seen. This is one of the best things we can possibly do for our marine environment, yet you feign a problem in that...what, someone might see it if they go diving there?
I supect that you simply have a problem with CDK, and are picking a quibble.

 

Mark Ive been a professional sailor all my life, nearly 40 years of non stop movement. I am sailing at this moment.
I know the harbours and ports and I see the careless disregard people have for the environment. At present when I dive overboard in the crystal clear waters of the MED, I see an underwater wasteland , junkyard, of modern human refuse....It is everywhere. The sea is their junkyard.
I know Mr CDKs part of the world well. Cres and Losinj are one of the most touristic, overused marine environments that you will ever see. The local authorities struggle with the effects of this tourist onslaught. The people pressure is so great that the harbours turn into cesspools in summer. You have nothing remotely similar in the US.

To even suggest that its OK to take your discarded toy and dump it into the sea when you grow tired of it is irresponsible.

What next ?...when you grow tired of your washing machine will you pile it in the back of the car...drive down a country lane then tip it into a ravine to make a nice hone for worms and snakes.

If the end result of controlled boat incineration, recycling uses energy and creates air pollution..so be it...build the energy and pollution cost into the yearly boat registration , disposal fee. The object is create a profitable, regulated recycling environment for contractors to operate in.

To the original poster...as you can see recycling will only become a reality if people are forced, with legislation, to properly dispose of their toys. You would be wise to also propose legally binding EU commitments in your research paper.

 

yes, of course one wouldn't dump where it could ever be seen. If I may ask, have you been to a place named the Island of Iz? Is it now dirty there?

 

You got that right!

Michael is googling for Iz because he has never heard about the place.
A remote spot, one small village and a miniature marina. Poor infrastructure, long supply lines, no money, so of course it is clean.

 

Otok Iz , Otok translates to Island, is on the edge of the Kornati National Park. Iz remains beautiful because of it remoteness. Perhaps one thousand inhabitants...at the most.
At present its difficult to anchor around the island. Otok Iz is virtually encircled with Tuna Farms. In the Adriatic Sea they purse seine Bluefin tuna then transport them alive to tuna holding pens. The ports of Iz, Iz Veli, Knez and Iz Mali, are on the East coast and very small. Veli and Mali translate to big and small. This makes the harbours of Otok Iz face into the Bora...a fierce NE wind and hard to use.

. This is the water ship that delivers drinking water.

Otok Iz is on the top left of the chart.

The boat disposal problem will not be on these islands..it will be on the mainland. The inhabitants of these islands are poor fisherman.

The problem is the thousands and thousands on bareboat charterboats on the coast. Perhaps the greatest concentration on plastic on earth. The marinas outside Zadar claim one thousand alone.

 

Think again CDK....17 years on the coast...And I dont hang out in Caravan parks.

 

If you want to make a dent in the issue of waste on the sea floor or debris floating in large eddies, then don't turn to the guy that sinks a well serving work horse or entertainment device. These "toys" are but a minuscule fraction of the real problem. The real problem is the major contributors to these problems aren't people, but industry (lots of them) and they have big legal defense teams that can't be easily budged off a policy.

This is the classic problem with those that want to stop the pollution. They peruse the wrong avenues of relief. The real problem is legislative, which of course is controlled by big money, which of course is nurtured by political campaign and other contributions, which naturally applies the appropriate "grease" when necessary to insure those that "actually" got them elected are magically exempt or get a "variance" of some sort. This is the real issue, not some guy untwisting the garboard plug on a 40 year old eye sore that's long past it's best day. It's the hundreds of thousands of tons, that are dumped by industry, every year.

I'm reminded of the "lead in the water" issue a few years back. Well, we all know darn right well it's heavy industry that places 99% of the lead in the water, but heaven forbid these folks might unleash their defense teams or worse, decide to contribute to someone else's campaign next election cycle, so what do the legislators do? Naturally, they start hunting the fishing lures and line weights of the fisherman. Why? Well it's simple, they don't have an organized lobbying effort, nor heavy hitting defense teams and they are easy targets to take down. It's a win win situation for the politicians who can now claim they are "doing something" about the lead in the water thing, plus they don't piss off the industries that paid them to get elected and it looks good if "spun" properly, come election time.

I'm all for saving and fixing problems, but frankly I've met very few who actually have a real clue about what these are. 90% of the people I've met haven't the faintest idea why it's important to separate investment banking from commercial, let alone the nuances of a non-proliferation agreement, let alone the name of the junior senator from their own state!

I guess the point I'm attempting to make is, that it's nice people like little Michael want to "fix" things, but these are the same people that think looking at the stock market, will give you a good indication of the country's economic health. Of course, they're grotesquely incorrect and should consider this an indication of their actual understanding of the issue. FWIW those interested in a (free market) country's economic health, should have a look at their bond markets. Of course this is just a peek, but usually fairly representative one for those engaged enough to have sorted out this particular detail!

 

People who dont make their living on the water do not grasp the scale of the approaching disposal problem.

Making your dead boat problem someones else's problem is unethical.

You cant just take a 25 meter motoryacht out to the lagoon and sink it.

In the Pictures are three dead boats, in the same small shipyard, ready for the Breakers.

The pictured Ferretti sank 7 years ago... the yacht is without engines, generator and all system are dead and rotten .... The refit cost well exceeds the value of a functioning brokerage Ferretti. The past hard standing fees owed the shipyard are enormous.

The Turkish built motoryacht is structurally unfit, ...scrap and has been hard standing for three years. They are already stripping anchors and anything of value.

The wooded sailboat has been on the hard for two years..expired

Spread out thru ports are hundreds of these beasts. Each year the problem grows.

Yacht breakers, shipyards, should profit from their labour when dismantling these beasts and material recyclers should profit from their tooling investment when disposing of the hull and all its metallic components..

A workable , environmentally friendly, profitable , disposal recycling scheme must be devised and enforced by government regulation.

This is the only way to encourage private investment in recycling technology.

 

This is precisely what I mean, the folks with the most desire have the least understanding. Disposing of these vessels isn't an issue, nor a problem for the most part. In this country they'll feed a steam powered generator and supply the grid with energy. They aren't hurting anything where they sit, other then some folks ideas of the way things should look. If their presence was an issue for the yard, they would move quickly to regain the dry storage space. Again, this is an issue of understanding the real problem, not the perception of a problem. The real problem is legislative or in most cases, the lack of sufficient legislation to address the concern.

In a free society, a property owner deserves every opportunity to "make right" his dept, which is typically the "real issue" of derelicts. This isn't an issue that can be "forced" unless it's a recognized hazard. If it is a hazard, then it takes some time to determine it so, unless adrift, which very few are. So, again the understanding thing pops up. You have to establish (typically in court) a hazard or liability or dept, then receive a disposition, then satisfaction of any and all dept, then ownership transfer and only then can a yard, shop or state run agency, spend even more money to drag it to a land fill.

So, how many dollars should a municipality or marina spend to gain ownership, just to dispose of the yacht (read spend even more money), especially in these economic times? This is the understanding aspect of the issue. It's important to understand how things work, before you ***** about the process.

 

Thanks for the answers..

But the big problem is how to recycling the plastic???

It is not the plastic of a bottle..

 

The glass fibers will begin to burn around 900 degrees (F). The plastic can be ground up for use as filler, which is precisely what SeaCast uses in their polyester core filler product.

 

We just finished burning 3 small boats. One was a plywood sailing boat with the hull grp coated, the 2nd a grp rowing boat, the 3rd an old oak fishing boat, coated and extensively repaired with all kinds of glass and resin.
The last one was the most difficult and took the better part of 3 days.

What is left are a few handfuls of fasteners, some ash and several garbage bags of glass cloth. I have not been able to identify any molten glass, but the weight of the remains is very much less than I expected.

Can glass really burn and the combustion products go airborne?

 

Do you know if exist any patents related to boat recycling?

 

You'll need a sustained 2k degrees for 'glass to go molten, at which point it will run to the bottom of what ever it's burning in and pool. A typical bon fire will have isolated areas within it of 12 to 14k but mostly will be in the 800 degree range. There's a few reasons for this, but the presence of O2 (or lack of it in this case) is the biggest culprit to a cool fire.