Recycled (Circular Economy or Closed Loop) Sail Manufacturing

[solosails]

People like Quba and a couple of others will accept old sails which they turn into trendy overpriced jackets and bags. They do not, however, pay for them (I think they may give you a cheap very basic bag if you deliver the sail to them) which implies that the scrap value of used polyester sailcloth is basically nil.

Pete

It implies, that nobody currently offers a facility to recycle them unfortunately, because nobody is, and if nobody is, then nobody will as it were.

It takes an initiative like this to gather all lofts into the game so that there is enough scrap to be valuable, and until we start that process off, it will just all go in the ever growing land fill

 

[prv]

Well, you wouldn't be able to get your deposit back from them, but you would be able to from any of the others

Whereas if I don't join your scheme, I have a free choice of the whole market, worldwide. Not exactly a selling point, is it?

Pete

 

[Tranona]

Hi Tranona,

Well, the fizzy drink is consumable, but the bottle isn't, which is why we all recycle our bottles these days to save materials and energy etc. But it was a point I made to say that the idea of a refundable deposit on an item we buy is not a new one, and is not such a strange thing to apply to sails as well.

Re sail's lifespan, yes, they do (or at least should) last for very many years, but even f they are looked after and washed etc, the shape and performance of a Dacron sail will have deteriorated so badly after good general use over a ten year period, that although it may look in good shape, the boats performance is probably suffering badly.

The amount of times I've heard a customer say how amazed he/she is with the performance of their boat after they have changed the sails for the first time in ten years, is amazing.

Of course, we cannot all afford to buy new sails every 5 years, in fact, I haven't changed mine for way too long either! but for those that do appreciate the performance gain from new sails and can afford that luxury may want to consider the option of a recycled sail perhaps? (I would!)

Think you are talking about a small minority of cruising sailors who buy new sails on that short cycle. Of course they appreciate the value of new sails, but they are a big investment, both in relation to a sailing budget and the capital value of older boats. People tend to adjust to declining performance and only replace if they have no option. Can't see your proposed scheme being any incentive to change that sort of cycle.

Perhaps aim your service at racing sailors who do spend a lot on sails, replacing them frequently to stay competitive.

 

[solosails]

Is adding to the 'pool' of reclaimed PET such a bad thing? At least it is being reused. When we stop buying plastic garden furniture, wheelie bins and non-food grade buckets, then I can see your point. Until then, plastic recycling is reduced the total amount of plastic in the environment.

No its not a bad thing, I agree

 

[Daydream believer]

Dunno about you, but after 40 + years none of my sails have ended up in landfill
they are still in the garage loft
Being "biodegradable" the mice are gradually turning them into nests or mouse droppings which in turn fertilises the ivy growing through the brick walls

Does that make me a conservationist?

 

[solosails]

Whereas if I don't join your scheme, I have a free choice of the whole market, worldwide. Not exactly a selling point, is it?

Pete

Not sure I get your meaning, you can get your deposit back if you like at any time, and you still have a free choice of the market.

It's not in order to sell more sails, it's in order to stop so much waste, not a sales tactic

 

[solosails]

Dunno about you, but after 40 + years none of my sails have ended up in landfill
they are still in the garage loft
Being "biodegradable" the mice are gradually turning them into nests or mouse droppings which in turn fertilises the ivy growing through the brick walls

Does that make me a conservationist?

hehe

 

[Angele]

The point is that a fizzy drink is a short-term purchase - if you drink fizzy drinks then you're buying new ones and disposing of old containers in a more or less continuous stream. For sailors (as opposed to sailmakers), sails are not a stream, they're a one-off capital purchase. It makes very little sense to compare the two.

Pete

I am a fan of the PET bottle recovery scheme in Norway. Every PET bottle has a deposit on it. Not excessive, but enough to encourage recycling. Nearly every supermarket has a recycling machine with a barcode reader which detects that a returned bottle had a deposit on it and refunds that money. So, you take a bag of empties with you when you go shopping and come back with a load of full ones.

Their PET bottle recycling rate must be really high. Of course, this kind of scheme only works with legislation behind it making it mandatory.

 

[solosails]

Think you are talking about a small minority of cruising sailors who buy new sails on that short cycle. Of course they appreciate the value of new sails, but they are a big investment, both in relation to a sailing budget and the capital value of older boats. People tend to adjust to declining performance and only replace if they have no option. Can't see your proposed scheme being any incentive to change that sort of cycle.

Perhaps aim your service at racing sailors who do spend a lot on sails, replacing them frequently to stay competitive.

Yes, this has been done already actually, I believe UK sails have produced a line of laminate sails that can be re-claimed, I'm not sure how well they are selling, and if the short section of response from this forum is anything to judge by, I'd imagine they aren't selling well!

A pity , a very big pity, we obviously have a long way to go with this sort of manufacturing attitude.

 

[prv]

It takes an initiative like this to gather all lofts into the game so that there is enough scrap to be valuable, and until we start that process off, it will just all go in the ever growing land fill

To be clear, I'm not a fan of throwing everything into landfill. If it's possible to recycle old sails then we should be doing so. But I think that needs to be as part of a generalised plastics recycling process, not treating sails as special (maybe it's inevitable that a group of sailmakers would end up doing so ) and dreaming up overcomplicated processes for them and them alone. As Angele says, deal with them alongside the plastic buckets and broken toys and all the other plastic detritus we generate.

Pete

 

[solosails]

I am a fan of the PET bottle recovery scheme in Norway. Every PET bottle has a deposit on it. Not excessive, but enough to encourage recycling. Nearly every supermarket has a recycling machine with a barcode reader which detects that a returned bottle had a deposit on it and refunds that money. So, you take a bag of empties with you when you go shopping and come back with a load of full ones.

Their PET bottle recycling rate must be really high. Of course, this kind of scheme only works with legislation behind it making it mandatory.

Yes, exactly, it takes an incentive to start this sort of thing happening. I'm just keen to get the ball rolling, at the end of the day, I dont really care what the deposit system is, I just want sails to be more environmentally freindly

 

[RAI]

What I'm mainly concerned with is the lessening of new plastic usage to create sails. I also want to lessen the amount of landfill for the end of their working lives as well.

A noble cause, although sails must be peanuts compared to the tonnage going into plastic bottles (for example). The key would be to lengthen the life new sails, at one end, and to find a profit making recycling system for old sails, on the other.

 

[solosails]

To be clear, I'm not a fan of throwing everything into landfill. If it's possible to recycle old sails then we should be doing so. But I think that needs to be as part of a generalised plastics recycling process, not treating sails as special (maybe it's inevitable that a group of sailmakers would end up doing so ) and dreaming up overcomplicated processes for them and them alone. As Angele says, deal with them alongside the plastic buckets and broken toys and all the other plastic detritus we generate.

Pete

Yep, I think that is becoming evident that a specific closed cycle might not be the best approach.

 

[prv]

Not sure I get your meaning, you can get your deposit back if you like at any time, and you still have a free choice of the market.

Ah, ok, that wasn't very clear. So you can walk into any participating sailmaker at any time, hand over your "circular sails" deposit certificate, and walk out with some cash?

Pete

 

[solosails]

Ah, ok, that wasn't very clear. So you can walk into any participating sailmaker at any time, hand over your "circular sails" deposit certificate, and walk out with some cash?

Pete

Yep, that was the suggestion

 

[solosails]

A noble cause, although sails must be peanuts compared to the tonnage going into plastic bottles (for example). The key would be to lengthen the life new sails, at one end, and to find a profit making recycling system for old sails, on the other.

Have you felt the weight of a new sail recently!? There's a lot of PET fibres in there, and Stainless etc

But yes, agree that making them last longer is a good way to go about things, but that is not such an easy thing to achieve immediately.

However, new laminate sails do last longer in terms of stretch and the recent developments in new taffeta's are improving the physical life of the sails too.

 

[lw395]

This sounds like a restrictive scheme aimed at preventing people from selling their used sails secondhand, so that the people who would have bought used sails are forced to buy new.
Being a club-level dinghy sailor, I've bought a fair few secondhand sails, the top guys often sell them after a season or two's racing.
I've also bought the odd ex-racing yacht sail and used it for cruising.

I would think a majority of pure cruising sails actually outlive the ownership of the boat?
The sails I bought new for my last boat were still in use when she was sold, how would the new owner, in Germany, have got the deposit back?

 

[solosails]

This sounds like a restrictive scheme aimed at preventing people from selling their used sails secondhand, so that the people who would have bought used sails are forced to buy new.
Being a club-level dinghy sailor, I've bought a fair few secondhand sails, the top guys often sell them after a season or two's racing.
I've also bought the odd ex-racing yacht sail and used it for cruising.

I would think a majority of pure cruising sails actually outlive the ownership of the boat?
The sails I bought new for my last boat were still in use when she was sold, how would the new owner, in Germany, have got the deposit back?

Hi there, It's not meant to be restrictive in any way (certainly not aimed at that anyway), in fact it just gives sailors another option of material to use.

Nothing would stop anyone from buying or selling their used sails as they please. This is a specific approach to try and create a line of sails that are recycled.

It would be an international scheme, so any participating lofts could work with it. However, it tends to be pretty rare that boats are sold between different countries due to the import duty etc.

I'm starting to think the deposit thing is getting in the way of this debate, the main question I guess which has only been answered once so far is would people be happy to have a sail made from recycled materials, it seems so far that nobody does, which I find very disheartening indeed.

Lest say there is no deposit involved (the idea was to help towards the extra work involved by the sailmakers to reclaim the materials), but lets say that the sailors have to strip off the separate components of the sail and return it like that for a discount on a new sail... If you put it that way around does it sound more appealing?

 

[Tranona]

I'm starting to think the deposit thing is getting in the way of this debate, the main question I guess which has only been answered once so far is would people be happy to have a sail made from recycled materials, it seems so far that nobody does, which I find very disheartening indeed.

Lest say there is no deposit involved (the idea was to help towards the extra work involved by the sailmakers to reclaim the materials), but lets say that the sailors have to strip off the separate components of the sail and return it like that for a discount on a new sail... If you put it that way around does it sound more appealing?

Now you are asking a completely different question. Would people buy sails made from material that is partly recycled. The answer is probably would consider it, after all we buy lots of other products that incorporate recycled material. Whether the interest turns into a decision to purchase will then depend entirely on the value they offer - that is the benefits as perceived by the buyer in relation to the price paid. The feel good factor might sway some, but probably not at any kind of premium.

I used to cover this kind of issue when running courses on ethical management. One of my questions to my mature audience (you can guess how long ago this was) was "if catalytic converters were an option would you specify one to help reduce pollution?" The answers were always the same - "only if it was no cost, or the company paid for it, or for a small number, only if it meant I could have the colour of paint I wanted." In other words, individuals are not prepared to make personal sacrifices unless they personally benefit. You can use this sort of test on all sorts of scenarios.

So, would sailors participate in a recycling scheme. Yes, if it was no cost to them or even better a small benefit by way of a lower cost of a new product. Not sure that requiring them to strip all the hardware for free would work. Also not convinced that old sails make a significant contribution to landfill, given as others have pointed out many sails are retained as spares or recycled through the second hand market. This may well of course change as the explosion in the number of new boat builds of 10-20 years ago works its way through the cycle and sails need replacing.

Think your best approach is to develop a line of sails made from recycled material to demonstrate that they are viable both in function and price. Create a demand for the product and supply of old material will (excuse the pun) materialise.

 

[Daydream believer]

Are we sure that old sails are a problem as to regards landfill etc. Whilst i accept that there are tonnes of sails made every year ,do they actually get dumped & if so do they rot down ( & to what constituents)in a short or long time
If they decompose quite quickly is it a problem? Do we know what happens or are we guessing?
My joke post earlier may have a bit of practicality in it. Dacron sails rot (i assume) & the resin just decomposes due to UV etc - (or does it)
I accept that laminate sails are becoming popular & less likely to decompose - or are they?
Surely research should first be done to find out what happens to old sails in the long term

Personally i would like to see some effort into how to dispose of old GRP boats rather than the rags they fly when in use