Boat Recycling Conference Looks To The Future

Boat industry professionals from 10 different countries met today in Amsterdam to begin what they hope is the start of a global dialogue on recycling old boats.

Suggesting that the recreational boating industry can follow the lead of the auto sector and design its products so they can be more easily broken down into reusable components, boat recycling conference organizer Peter Franklin says the boat industry has an opportunity to take a lead role in what is becoming a growing problem – disposing of old boats. “What we don’t want is for government to come in and just put another tax on boats to offset their eventual disposal cost,” said Franklin. “It will be better for everyone if the boat industry takes the lead and develops ways of recycling them.”

End-of-life boats are a growing problem, he says, considering how many of them were built and sold in the boom period during the 1970s and 1980s. These boats are now 40 or more years old, and many are ready for retirement.

“There are at least 40 million recreational boats in the world,” says Franklin. “If one percent of them reach end-of-life each year, that’s 400,000 boats headed for landfill. It’s a big problem now, and it’s going to be an even bigger problem moving forward if we don’t start doing something about it.”

Delegates from France, Sweden, Germany, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Denmark and the UK attended the event which was run in conjunction with the 2015 Marine Equipment Trade Show (METS) which opens Tuesday at the Amsterdam RAI conference and exhibition centre.