Recycled (Circular Economy or Closed Loop) Sail Manufacturing

I never keep a boat long enough to replace sails and the eco bit is of no real interest. My concern in buying sails would be cost vs how long they keep their shape.

As for re-cycling, what about making sail bags, jackets etc from them. I would be perfectly happy to dump my old sails at a sailmaker, probably the one supplying the next set. So no need for the deposit system. In any case with ( say) a ten year life, a deposit is more likely a give away. Will the sailmaker still be going? Will the money be worth anything much?

P.S. I should hope that you are a profiteer. Why else would you be in business?
 
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solosails said:
OK daydream Believer, you are actually just being quite unpleasant now.

The deposit system was an idea to help fund the extra work involved in stripping down the raw materials, It costs me thousands of pounds a year to employ my staff, which helps keep the British economy afloat.

If I were to take on the extra work to recycle the materials for everyone else's benefit, I would have to charge slightly more on my output sales in order to cover the cost, so everyone would pay anyway, however, just like I happily recycle my household waste for free, I would also be happy to offer this collection service for free in order to benefit the future inheritors of our beautiful planet.

Seriously, if you have nothing pleasant or helpful to say, please kindly leave this discussion, you have made your point, and I doubt there are many who would agree with you. (I hope!)
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Ok try another tack First i said that a lot of recycling was rubbish ( i chose the term rubbish on purpose). I dd not say you were rubbish, that would be insulting & I do not feel I have intended to insult you, only place a differing opinion.
i do not necessarily think there is anything wrong in you following your ideals. I just want to express the opinion ( to which you seem to object) that sometimes we take this too far. I happen to believe that we really do & whilst i do not want to contaminate the world any more than you I feel that the charge to recycling is somewhat misdirected .My comment about the planet seeing me out was just a tongue in cheek wind up & you really bit.

However, ask yourself why i would want to pay you a deposit to recycle someone else's sails. If i want to buy " green" sails then i will pay the price at the time. i certainly will not give cash to some "outfit who is here today & gone tomorrow " & before you go ballistic i am not suggesting you are but i am sure you get my point

If you feel there is a demand for " green" sails then by all means ask around do some research. That is the right way to do it. Then put your own money where your mouth is - not ours.
All i did was hijack your thread ( read the edit on my post) but put my point that I am not in favour of the " all out recycling" brigade- or financing your fantasies

So my answer to your query is -No to the deposit. & to the different sails well when you produce them, or the recycling process, then advertise it. tell me how good you are & how much i have to pay you & i will decide then

& to wind you up even more -- sort that 19% waste out -- that is where you would better direct your efforts
 
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I would expect with some confidence that old sails can not be recycled into new sails of acceptable quality, economically. And who would want to replace their sails with ones of poor quality. I would though expect that old sails can be recycled into something else even if only feedstock for plastics.
 
solosails said:
It would be interesting to know what weight that is of PET
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Probably depends on how much beach you looked on...
Have you spoken to any of the companies that take away bottles for recycling?
What is the business model?
Do they pay for sorted bottles, or are they paid to take them away?
AIUI, if I put a bottle in my home recycling bin, some poor person manually sorts it and it goes for recycling.
So there is a huge cost in getting sorted bottles. As you imply, a lot of bottles to a kg
But it happens.
I suspect the question is whether the pet from sails is too impure/degraded to be worth recycling?
Whereas bottles (at least those from kitchen bins not the beach) are fairly pure and can be melted down with few by products.

It may be that the market for once-used PET is already over-catered for by the bottle industry.
A bit like (AIUI) the market for used glass is over-supplied to the point where most bottles from bottle banks are not actually recycled into glass, but end up in building materials.

Anyway, should you not be busy making sails at this time of year?
 
Daydream believer said:
Ok try another tack First i said that a lot of recycling was rubbish ( i chose the term rubbish on purpose). I dd not say you were rubbish, that would be insulting & I do not feel I have intended to insult you, only place a differing opinion.
i do not necessarily think there is anything wrong in you following your ideals. I just want to express the opinion ( to which you seem to object) that sometimes we take this too far. I happen to believe that we really do & whilst i do not want to contaminate the world any more than you I feel that the charge to recycling is somewhat misdirected .My comment about the planet seeing me out was just a tongue in cheek wind up & you really bit.

However, ask yourself why i would want to pay you a deposit to recycle someone else's sails. If i want to buy " green" sails then i will pay the price at the time. i certainly will not give cash to some "outfit who is here today & gone tomorrow " & before you go ballistic i am not suggesting you are but i am sure you get my point

If you feel there is a demand for " green" sails then by all means ask around do some research. That is the right way to do it. Then put your own money where your mouth is - not ours.
All i did was hijack your thread ( read the edit on my post) but put my point that I am not in favour of the " all out recycling" brigade- or financing your fantasies

So my answer to your query is -No to the deposit. & to the different sails well when you produce them, or the recycling process, then advertise it. tell me how good you are & how much i have to pay you & i will decide then

& to wind you up even more -- sort that 19% waste out -- that is where you would better direct your efforts
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Thank you for your more detailed and less offensive post. Thanks.
 
Daydream believer said:
Ok i hope i have persuaded you to see offence was in the interpretation
Not in the composition
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Well, when you said that you weren't joking, I kind of took that to mean you were serious, and after that you then went on to be quite aggressively accusational, so I think we have to agree to split the difference here. Your intention was as you admit yourself to aggravate, and that is not constructive.

If you aggravate people on purpose, you must expect them to respond accordingly.
 
lw395 said:
Probably depends on how much beach you looked on...
Have you spoken to any of the companies that take away bottles for recycling?
What is the business model?
Do they pay for sorted bottles, or are they paid to take them away?
AIUI, if I put a bottle in my home recycling bin, some poor person manually sorts it and it goes for recycling.
So there is a huge cost in getting sorted bottles. As you imply, a lot of bottles to a kg
But it happens.
I suspect the question is whether the pet from sails is too impure/degraded to be worth recycling?
Whereas bottles (at least those from kitchen bins not the beach) are fairly pure and can be melted down with few by products.

It may be that the market for once-used PET is already over-catered for by the bottle industry.
A bit like (AIUI) the market for used glass is over-supplied to the point where most bottles from bottle banks are not actually recycled into glass, but end up in building materials.

Anyway, should you not be busy making sails at this time of year?
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Hehe! Yes you're right I should be making sails!

I meant the weight of your stack of sails in the garage not the bottles on the beach really, but it was a passing comment.

I think you're right, the crux is does UV degraded sail cloth yield useful recyclable PET or not? This is to be determined.
 
solosails said:
I apologize for asking somebody who is accusing me of being a profiteer, to leave the discussion. OK?

and now can we get back to the point in hand?
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Just spotted this thread; as I'm sure somebody else has already asked this question, would you mind pointing me to the explanation as to why you don't just charge the "deposit" to those wishing to have their sails recycled by you?
 
dom said:
Just spotted this thread; as I'm sure somebody else has already asked this question, would you mind pointing me to the explanation as to why you don't just charge the "deposit" to those wishing to have their sails recycled by you?
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Hi Dom, glad you haven't been put off by the small squable talk and thanks for the question.

The original suggestion was almost exactly as you suggest, to just charge deposits for a specific range of "green" as they have been dubbed sails.

However, it soon became apparent that there was a feer (and quite rightly so) that this would effectively 'lock' a customer into one sailmaker indefinitely. Actually it wouldn't have, because by the nature of a deposit, it is returnable so at any point they could return their sail and get their money back.

However, the discussion progressed a little (without too much argument) to sugest that this would be unfair for anybody who bought a boat with a set of green sails and how would they get their deposit back?

Actually again, this wouldn't be too much an issue because they could as the previous owner could have, returned them and got the cash back. Also it was the original premise that the deposit scheme would be international for all participating sailmakers.

However at this point it becomes unworkable and everyone pointed out that they wouldn't pay to ensure a sail was recycled anyway, so it was pretty much at the stage that a deposit or 'rental' scheme was unworkable.

This left us with people only wanting to be involved in the scheme if they didn't have to pay more or in fact paid less, leaving the sailmaker to pick up all the extra load of work for no financial help.

At this point, I said I would be willing to do it for free because I beleive that recycling sails is anworthwhile pursuit and it would also enable us to add out manufacturing scrap into the collection at the same time.

That's about where we have got to . In summary,

People might be interested as long as they got cheaper sails otherwise they don't really care. Apart from one member here who said they would be happy to pay a little extra for a green sail.

My position now is still that I just want to get a sail recycling facility up and running whether it costs me or not as I think we owe it to our future generations to use as little oil and fossil fuels as possible And be as efficient as we possibly can with our resorces which has the added benefit of reducing land fill rubbish.

The biggest hit h to the proposal is that PEt could well be useless for a closed cycle material as it looses its strength ( we suppose) after uv exposure, so the material could probably only be used for less structural purposes, but this is still better than dumping it.

It was also my proposal that we in tandem with the material manufacturers, could produce a line of cloth that uses a minimum of 50% recycled PET ( regardless of it's original origin) and that would help close the loop a little.

These recycled sails may have to be a little heavier in order to compensate for the tenacity loss, but I feel that would be a price worth paying to reduce plastic/oil usage in sails by 50%.

hope that re-caps the situation so far fairly?

Thanks
 
Solosails, gosh thanks for such a comprehensive reply! Full marks to you for thinking laterally about the environment, something which more often than not is the sign of a good business. Knocking around formative ideas like this is I would have thought a perfectly valid use of this forum. You openly admit that the idea is in need of refinement and that the original proposal might be a bit cumbersome; fair play to you and I've no idea why notions of sail recycling creates so much stress.
 
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dom said:
Solosails, gosh thanks for such a comprehensive reply! Full marks to you for thinking laterally about the environment, something which more often than not is the sign of a good business. Knocking around formative ideas like this is I would have thought a perfectly valid use of this forum. You openly admit that the idea is in need of refinement and that the original proposal might be a bit cumbersome; fair play to you and I've no idea why notions of sail recycling creates so much stress.
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No, I was very taken aback by the general response as well!

Anyway, glad you think asking the opinion of the users of sails was a worthwhile forum use, that is exactly why I put it out there to see what bounced back.

I feel quite bruised. :)
 
I have been thinking about this again overnight.

Instead of a deposit, how about rental?

If the sail is worth normally £1500, how about a nominal life expectancy was put on it of say 3 years for example.

The customer would pay a monthly rental fee of 1500/(3x12)=£41.67 per month instead of buying it outright.

A sort of naught percent finance for example.

The customer could return the sail after three years and get a new one and continue the rental, or they could just keep renting the same one if they thought it was still in good shape. Perhaps with an option to buy off the lease and keep the sail if they want to.

This way, the customer always gets a good sail, the sail is always returned (and recycled), the sailmaker has a more stable yearly income and the customer doesn't have to fork out such a big lump sum in the first place.

I think that would keep everyone happy.

The biggest risk of course would be for the sailmaker who would enevitably have some customers who simple sail of into the sunset and stop paying or basically steal the sail. For this reason, the price per month would have to be higher to cover the percentage of nasty people out there. Much like insurance etc.

How about that then sailors, sails that get replaced often, but at small monthly prices ?

Please don't beat me up too much this time for making a suggestion! Thanks
 
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I don't think I'm going to go looking to have inferior sails made from part-recycled material.
I buy brand new sails infrequently and expect to get a long life from them.
In terms of resources used, the raw material is actually quite low in relation to the retail cost.

Perhaps a scheme that might work is similar to car tyres, where consumers pay a charge for environmental disposal, which subsidises lower end re-use?
In the case of car tyres, it's things like rubber matting for play surfaces, landscaping materials and others.

But you have to be very careful with recycling, many schemes waste more resources in transport than they save.
 
Don't think the mechanism used for getting users involved is the issue at all. The proposed rental scheme is again far to cumbersome and does not offer anything to a user who is quite happy based on the comments so far to choose and pay for the sails that best meet their requirements in terms of performance and life.

You need to separate the purchase and use of sails from the recycling aspect. As I have said a number of times, until you can establish the economic value of old sails or waste material from your production process, talking about how you persuade owners of recyclable material to put it into the system is irrelevant.

So, concentrate on investigating whether there is a demand for recycled products and more importantly an economically viable process for conversion. Once you have done that you have a positive offering to people to participate.

Trying to appeal to conscience, moral obligation and all that is a waste of time. Look around at successful recycling and you will see that it is successful because there is economic value in the process, subsidised for political reasons or mandated by law. Would suggest that the latter 2 reasons would not apply in this case, so you are left with only one option.
 
Little Grebe said:
According to the blurb for my new sails, they can be recycled using standard processes

http://www.onesails.com/international/4t-forte
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Wow! Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I am so pleased that this is being done with laminate sails and glad such a massive company is allready actively looking at sail recyclability.

Bravo One sails, glad I am no longer a tiny voice banging his head against A Seemingly impregnable brick wall !
 
solosails said:
The biggest risk of course would be for the sailmaker who would enevitably have some customers who simple sail of into the sunset and stop paying or basically steal the sail. For this reason, the price per month would have to be higher to cover the percentage of nasty people out there. Much like insurance etc.
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So I, the buyer, would end up paying more to cover the thief's part of the process
When i buy a new sail i budget for it, pay for it & that is it done.

No way would I want to have to go on paying for an item over a period of time when I may no longer have the means to pay because of some other huge yachtie bill
 
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