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Going green can be a gradual process. Here are some tips to help keep your boating footprint small, your wallet full, and your days easy.
Photos: Getty Images/Courtneyk, Stacey Nedrow-Wigmore, Jon Sullivan/CC BY-NC 2.0; Bernadette Bernon
Good boaters care for the health of our waterways. Regardless of our boating preferences, there are plenty of simple habit changes and creative tactics that can lessen a boater’s environmental ripples. Try a few of these on your next waterborne adventure to do your part while setting a good example for family, friends, and fellow boaters.
Clean Ships, Clean Seas
1. Anything we put on our boats runs the risk of ending up in the water, so make sure that soaps and cleaners are as water-safe as possible. Look for labels that demonstrate a product’s environmental safety, such as EPA’s “Safer Choice” label. Deck cleaners that contain phosphates, chlorine, bleach, or ammonia could be toxic to marine life, so avoid those ingredients, if possible. Additionally, most boat cleaners come concentrated. Dilute your soap as recommended by the manufacturer before you use it. Not only does it clean just as well, but less soap will run off into the water. You’ll also significantly stretch the amount of cleaning power you get from a single bottle.
2. Some of your grandmother’s homemade cleaning concoctions work well on boat interiors, too. A vinegar solution, although not a disinfectant, goes a long way toward dissolving grime and warding away mold, and a bottle of grocery-store white vinegar is only a few dollars! Be sure not to mix anything dangerous, such as bleach with ammonia or hydrogen peroxide with vinegar, and always test your cleaner in an inconspicuous corner before slathering it all over your cabin.
3. Beneath the waterline, keeping a clean, smooth hull can reduce your fuel consumption up to 20% each year, reducing your emissions and saving you money! Perfecting your trim and operating at a fuel-efficient rpm, below full throttle, helps as well.
Tip
Skip The Ice
4. “Get ice for the cooler” is an item on many a boater’s predeparture to-do list. It doesn’t have to be! Avoid plastic ice bags and cases of plastic water bottles by half filling those reusable bottles taking up room in your cabinets and freezing them the night before. When you’re ready to go, fill them up, and pop them into your cooler instead. They’ll keep each other and everything else cold and, as they melt, you get bottles of ice-cold water to drink.
5. If the ice is for fish, the livewells on modern boats are incredibly good at keeping fish alive and may render your icebox unnecessary. So long as you’re not using the livewell for bait, try skipping the ice – and the plastic bag it comes in – by storing your catch in the well. Plus, usually these wells are flooded and are much easier to clean after the trip than that fish box.
6. Also, instead of buying individual juice bottles, bring frozen concentrates of juice – apple, cranberry, OJ – whatever you and your kids like – and mix that into the person’s water bottle, or into sparkling water as needed. You can also buy top quality tonic concentrate and mix it into sparkling water you make at home in your SodaStream; the result is excellent tonic for G&Ts back at the dock, and no wasteful single-use plastic bottles.
DID YOU KNOW?
The average American uses 365 plastic bags and 156 plastic bottles each year. If every BoatU.S. member stopped using plastic bags and bottles, collectively we could save more than 280 million plastic bags and over 120 million plastic bottles every year! That’s enough plastic bottles to get two-thirds of the way around the planet, and enough plastic bags to wrap around the planet four times!
Practice crew overboard techniques while also cleaning up the environment. Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images, Smartstock; Mystic Knotwork, Mark Corke
DID YOU KNOW?
The U.S. alone produces 17 million tons of textile waste annually. That’s more than a million garbage trucks’ worth. Less than 15% of all textile waste in the U.S. is recycled or repurposed.
Reuse, Reduce, And Repurpose
7. If you have waterproof clothing that’s lost its edge, don’t replace it just yet. Most waterproof textile materials, such as GORE-TEX, can be “reactivated” with a 20-minute tumble dry. Just read the label or the manufacturer’s instructions first!
8. Do you have a vast collection of T-shirts accumulated from regattas, fishing tournaments, boat shows, or lakeside barbecues you can’t part with? Repurpose them into a quilt of your favorite events. The leftover scraps are perfect shop rags. If sewing isn’t your strong suit, projectrepat.com is one company that will do it for you.
9. When a fish bites the tail off a soft plastic lure, save the front half. When the front half of a soft plastic lure rips off the hook shank, save the back half. When you have a bunch of each saved up, use a drop of Gorilla Glue to secure the fronts and backs of different lures together and you’ll have a whole new set of lures.
10. If excess line is your issue, polish up your marlinspike skills by repurposing old line into a mat, trivet, coaster, or even a dog leash!
11. Has your boat-gear collection grown unwieldy? Consider consigning items at a local marine consignment shop, or sell the gear in a nautical garage sale. You’ll free up space in exchange for some cash, and another boater will get to repurpose your gear.
Conserving Resources
12. When washing dishes aboard, significantly reduce your freshwater consumption by making your own double sink. Set a plastic tub beside your built-in sink. Make the tub the washing station and the sink the rinsing station, or vice versa.
13. If you need a light washdown at the end of the day – either for yourself or the boat – try a garden sprayer. You read that right. Sprayers filled with water use far less than a conventional washdown hose but, because they’re pressurized, still produce decent cleaning power to knock sand from your feet and salt from your decks. For real luxury, cover the sprayer in dark fabric, replace the existing sprayer hose with one for a kitchen-sink, secure it in the sunshine, and let the sun warm the water all day.
Leave No Trace
14. Keeping trash aboard and contained is a persistent challenge. Try stuffing an empty gallon jug or water bottle with all your soft plastic, using a stick to tamp it down. Trash stays contained and occupies a very small space!
15. Reduce the amount of trash accumulated aboard – and the potential for errant flyaways – by removing the packaging from new products or food before bringing it aboard.
16. It’s a good idea to keep a net aboard. Use it to scoop up any floating debris you find when it’s safe to do so and discard it properly ashore – a good example for kids and guests. You can also use picking up trash in the water to practice crew overboard techniques.
17. Painting the bottom can be made more pleasant – and greener – by using a vacuum sander to suck up paint dust as it’s sanded off, preventing a significant proportion of it from drifting off where it can enter waterways or worm its way into your respirator. It may also be required by the marina. Some will even rent you a dustless sander.
DID YOU KNOW?
An estimated 33 billion tons of plastic enters the ocean every year. That’s around two garbage trucks full every minute!
Smart Fueling
18. Fueling up over the water is an unavoidable aspect of boating, and a recipe for spillage. Use a spillproof fueling tool, like the Clean Way Fuel Fill, to help keep fuel out of the water and off your decks. Don’t rely on the nozzle’s auto-stop function, and never “top off” your boat’s fuel tank like you might a car; movement underway and heat expansion can cause unintended spillage.
19. Upgrade your jerry cans. New ones are required to meet stricter regulations to prevent “glugging” and splashing, which help keep you safe in addition to lessening the environmental risk. Always fill them on a flat, unmoving surface.
20. Consider purchasing some pumpout adapters (such as one from Sierra NoZall, available from westmarine.com) that fit your boat’s blackwater system. Pumpout stations that don’t create a perfect seal can make a mess of the water, your decks, and your day! Keep adapters aboard that you know will make a perfect seal with your specific deck fill, and make your pumpout experience cleaner for everyone involved. Get pumped out regularly to lessen the risk of pressure building up.
21. Never put anything into your head or blackwater system that isn’t quick-dissolving toilet paper or didn’t pass through your body – especially feminine hygiene products and “flushable” wipes. They can clog your system, and the marina’s system, with detrimental results. Untreated blackwater discharges into contained waterways is not only illegal in most waterways but can result in harmful algae blooms. In addition, cleaning products added to tanks often include chemicals toxic to marine life.
DID YOU KNOW?
A single gallon of fuel can contaminate 750,000 gallons of water.