Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/776460
www.BoatingIndustry.com 38 | Boating Industry | February 2017 BY CRAIG RITCHIE I f there's one thing we're good at, it's building boats. According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, there are more than 12 million recreational boats in the United States right now. And that figure continues to grow, with an estimated 238,000 new powerboats sold in 2015 alone. What we're not good at is figuring out what happens to all of these boats when they reach the end of their lives. It's a question that's coming to the fore as millions of boats mass-produced during the boom years of the 1970s and 1980s are now reaching the end of their days. The discussion around end-of-life boats has come to prominence in the last few years – and has been the subject of multiple industry conferences and think tanks that have sought to raise awareness of the problem within the boating industry – and come up with workable solutions. BUILDING FOR SUSTAINABILITY Millions of boats built during the glory days of the 1970s and 80s are now coming to the end of their life. So what happens with all these old hulls? The consensus among delegates attend- ing a Sustainability In The Marine Industry conference held last November in conjunc- tion with METS is that, worldwide, some- where between 35 to 40 million boats are now approaching the end of their lives. The challenge is that no one wants to touch them because there is no money to be made in scrapping old boats. Right now, the vast majority of old boats are simply cut up and buried in landfill. But with literally tens of millions of boats headed for the dump over the next several years, and each hull having the potential to leach a variety of toxic chemicals like formaldehyde into the groundwater, end-of-life boats represent a growing problem. Funding boat disposal "The U.S. and Canada represent probably half the world boating market," said NMMA President Thom Dammrich. "But this is not an issue that has reached a widespread level of consciousness in North America. In that sense, we're far behind Europe in thinking about what to do with end-of-life boats. Philosophically, no one would argue that it Millions of fiberglass boats are reaching the end of their usable lives.