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What Green Boaters Should Know About Tar Sands

Administrator — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:01:42 +0000

Beginning August 20th, more than 1,000 people began to converge on the White House in Washington, D.C. to protest potential legislation that would authorize construction of a 1,600-mile long pipeline between Canadian tar sands pits and United States oil refineries. Protesters have been arrested and released, but the fight against the tar sands is much larger than this single act of civil disobedience. Many scientists and environmentalists say that the results of this debate could have game-changing consequences for the United States and the world at large. Anyone who is inclined to work to protect the environment and slow climate change should have a better understanding of the tar sands controversy.

What You Should Know About Tar Sands

Tar sands oil is not the same as other oil. The oil that is extracted from Canadian tar sands contains a large amount of bitumen. This chemical difference changes excavation and refinery needs as well as the makeup of emissions. Tar sands oil is, basically, even worse for the environment than “regular” oil.

Pipeline would jeopardize fragile lands and water supplies. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Sand Hills of Nebraska, extremely porous land that would suffer greatly from any spills, and the shallow Ogallala Aquifer, which is a major source of water for much of the Midwest. The company that would be building the pipeline has a history of spills and accidents on past tar sands projects.

The tar sands produce a fossil fuel. Although the pipeline has been promoted as a solution for America’s current dependency on foreign oil, it is merely a short-term solution to a larger problem: ongoing dependency on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are a limited, non-renewable resource and this project is the result of a society scrambling to adjust to diminishing availability.

The fact that we can run out of fossil fuels is becoming more and more obvious, but current plans seem to be focused on looking harder at old solutions instead of looking for new answers. What can we do as individuals?

Contact your representatives in Congress and voice your concerns.
Reduce your own consumption of fossil fuels.
Use alternative fuel sources whenever possible.

And of course, spread the word!

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5 Green Pages on Facebook

Administrator — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:38:54 +0000

Facebook can be a great way to stay in touch with loved ones who live far away and reconnect with friends you haven’t seen for a while. But did you know it can also make you smarter and save you money?

There’s a lot more to gain from Facebook than another invitation to Mafia Wars! ”Liking” your favorite brands on Facebook can keep you in the loop about new products and special discounts. You might also be among the first to hear about technological advancements and news that’s important to you but hasn’t made the front page of the local paper. Here’s a list of some of our favorite green pages on Facebook.

5 Green Pages on Facebook

1. Seventh Generation - get the heads up on deals from local and online retailers right beside environmental news.

2. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps – one of our favorite producers of organic soaps, their Facebook page highlights what they’re doing to promote proper labeling and safer products for everyone.

3. EPA - want to know what the US government is doing to protect our environment? Go straight to the source!

4. Non-GMO Project - are you concerned about how your food is raised or manufactured? You’ll want to keep on eye on this page.

5. The Nature Conservancy - since 1951, this organization has been working to preserve plants, animals and natural communities around the world.

Of course, we’re also pretty excited about our own Facebook page. Have you liked us yet? Our Facebook fans get exclusive discounts. Check out the GreenBoatStuff Facebook page.

What’s your favorite green page on Facebook?

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Prevent the Spread of Invasive Species with Green Boating

Administrator — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:12:25 +0000

Prevent Invasive Species with Green Boating

According to the EPA, invasive species are one of the largest threats to the terrestrial, coastal and freshwater ecosystems in America. The good news is it’s relatively easy for green boaters to help stop the spread of invasive species.

What are invasive species?

Invasive species are plants, animals and pathogens that have been introduced into an area where it does not occur naturally. These species can establish a breeding population and spread widely throughout the new location, disturbing the delicate balance of the native ecosystem.

Where do invasive species come from?

One of the most common ways that invasive species are introduced is on the hull and in the ballast water of boats. A boat can unknowingly transport plants and tiny animals from one body of water to another by simply boating in different waterways.

How can you prevent the spread of invasive species?

Clean your boat thoroughly when you take it out of the water and again before you put it into water. This is especially important if you’ll be changing locations. It’s estimated that as much as two-thirds of invasive species in waterways and coastal regions have been introduced by boats.

Taking the time to properly clean your boat between launches can have a significant impact on your environment. Regular boat maintenance, including regular cleaning with environmentally-safe products, also protects your investment and helps your boat last longer.

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Why It’s Not Easy Being Green

Administrator — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:24:47 +0000

Why It’s Not Easy Being Green

Several factors will most likely confront you should you choose to adopt green boating.

Probably the biggest challenge to being green these days is cost. A jug of the cheapest generic cleaning product will be cheaper to buy than organic soap. But will it really be cheaper to use? I’m not talking dollars here, but rather the true cost of using a product that will shine up your boat for a few days only to linger in the water, infiltrating the aquatic food supply and possibly leading to algae blooms, dead zones, and even genetic mutations in fish? I know this sounds extreme, but according to numerous scientific experts this may be exactly what happens when traditional household cleaners build up in our waterways.

If, instead of just looking at the dollars and cents your store receipt says your petroleum-based boat soap cost, we could look at the big picture receipt, what would we find? What is the real cost to the environment when the toxins in that soap go over the side once you rinse down your decks? What are the true energy costs – both in actual production and shipping charges as well as greenhouse gases created – to manufacture and distribute that soap? What are the medical, social, and moral costs associated with the health problems the 12 year old Asian kid has from working in the factory where it was made? What damage was caused producing the plastic bottle your soap came in and how many generations will deal with that same bottle?

Now examine what it really costs for an adult worker to make a highly effective boat soap from chemical free, organic ingredients in a fair-labor factory in the USA, using renewable energy and recycled packaging material.

Which costs more? You decide. Unfortunately, organic soap will force you to open your wallet a little wider than if you buy the harmful stuff. In so many meaningful ways, though, the organic stuff is a real bargain.

Another reason Kermit was right involves the emotional cost of being green. If your experience is anything like mine, you will very likely pass through three distinct phases on this journey.

First, you are going to feel a little weird if this stuff is new to you. Carrying your own grocery bags into the store, asking your waiter if the salmon is wild or farmed, and trying to explain your new way of doing things to your ultra conservative friends or family members will take a bit of a toll. Remember though, it is time to act like grown-ups.

The second phase may leave you overwhelmed.
If you care enough to read this blog, you will probably read other stuff, or you already have. Once you educate yourself about what is really happening in the Ocean and elsewhere it is easy to become consumed by feelings of dread and hopelessness. Species extinction, fisheries collapse, climate change, babies –both human and not- born with compromised immune systems, and increasingly toxic food supplies are just a few of the heavy topics you will likely encounter if you choose to go green.

Getting past these harsh realities requires a simple do-what-you-can approach. It is just not realistic to expect that anger and education will solve these problems on their own. The key to lasting change lies in modifying the behavior of those causing the trouble. If, after starting down the sustainable path you find yourself adopting some of the ideas put forward then you will be part of the solution. One person in a marina doing the right thing that leads to three others and then ten more following suit really can make a difference.

Finally, once you get past stages one and two something remarkable starts to happen. Now I don’t mean to get all new age here, but there really is an emotional reward from being green.

The look my teenage daughter gave me when I told her I had joined Greenpeace was priceless. At first I think she thought the old man had lost his mind, now our dinner table conversations routinely turn to the environment – how cool is that?

Reconnecting with Nature is powerful stuff. Whether our logical minds want to admit it or not, there is a direct correlation between how alive you feel and how much you help or harm this planet. I know this might be a big eye-roller for some, but once you go green, magical moments await you. Seeing an eagle at sunset, barking back at the seals lolling on a channel marker, or laughing at the dolphin riding your bow wave, brings on a whole different feeling when you know you are living in harmony with the wild instead of trying to rule over it.

Kermit the frog got it right. It’s not easy being green.

Why Be Green On Your Boat?

Administrator — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:27:34 +0000

Why Be Green On Your Boat?

-Make you remember how good it feels to do the right thing.

You would think that boaters would be some of the most environmentally conscious folks out there. After all, we spend time and money to be on and in the water, we eat food that comes out of the water, and most of us claim to really love boating.

And yet, look between the slips in an average marina and what are you likely to see? Floating plastic, oil slicks, and any number of things that aren’t very green.

While it might be tempting to blame someone ashore for all the junk floating around out there, the fact is most of this crap comes from boats, big and small. While shoreside industry and land-based litter bugs certainly contribute to the mess, this blog is about what we boaters can do.

A short list of what green boating can do might include the following -

-Encourage boating related companies to offer more green products and become better corporate citizens.

-Promote sustainable environmental policies where producers and consumers give back as much as they take from the planet.

-Ensure future generations enjoy a healthy, clean and biologically vibrant time on the water.

-Reduce or eliminate the toxins that are in almost every recreational waterway, from your favorite fishing hole to the Pacific Ocean.

-Increase the plant and animal life in these same areas.

-Save endangered species and lead to the reestablishment of sea life that has abandoned the region.

-Improve the quality of drinking water everywhere.

-Reduce the growing amount of plastic particles entering the food chain.

-Reduce or eliminate the toxins your body absorbs when you are in the water.

-Reduce or eliminate the toxins you body absorbs when you are in your boat.

-Reduce or eliminate the toxins and hormone altering compounds that are in many of the seafoods we enjoy and feed to our kids.

Why Being Green Matters

Administrator — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:28:23 +0000

Why Being Green Matters

Up until about 150 years ago most of the world was clean and beautiful. Sure there are horror stories of people dying in the cities from primitive toxins like coal dust, lead poisoning, and so on, but by and large the lakes and rivers were clean and the Ocean was full of life. Stories abound of settlers in New England dropping buckets over the side of their ships and pulling them up full of cod. Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest thrived for generations by living in tune with the salmon runs. The biggest creatures in the history of the world, whales, lived long simple lives in the ocean deep.
Look at the world today.

Cod are rarely if ever found in Boston Harbor anymore, and if you are lucky enough to catch the one salmon allowed per fisherman each day in Puget Sound you need to worry about how much mercury it contains. Iceland still kills plenty of whales while the Japanese hide behind ridiculous claims that they need to murder these magnificent creatures in the name of science. All the while whale meat is for sale in downtown Tokyo.

How we treat the natural world says a lot about ourselves. If you believe, as I do, that our most distant ancestors came from the sea, then we should be ashamed of how badly we are treating Mother Ocean. Remarkably, most people who cause pollution, either on purpose, or not, give very little thought to how badly they are actually treating themselves and the generations yet to come. I don’t know anybody sane who would bathe in gasoline, eat plastic, or force their children to ingest poison, yet in a very real way, every time an old outboard spills fuel over the side, a $3.00 bundle of grocery- store toys gets left at the beach, or a tidy mom tries to shine up the galley with some cleaner full of toxins, this is exactly what happens.
Aside from our own health, what does it say about modern society when every resident Killer Whale in Puget Sound is so full of industrial toxins that the entire group is dying a slow death, unable to reproduce enough healthy offspring to keep the family growing. Or how about the dead beluga whales who are so full of toxins that disposal crews must wear haz-mat suits when removing their carcasses from the beach? Industrial defenders would like you to think occurrences like these are one in a million, but the sad truth is that similar problems can be found all the way up and down the aquatic food chain, from plankton to polar bears.

Take a peek at what is happening beneath the waves in Chesapeake Bay, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, or in almost any large body of water, and the scene is bleak. In almost every commercial fishery around the world, the current population of marine organisms is over 90% less than it once was. 90%! Most of this decimation has been caused by overfishing of course – a topic we won’t be delving into very much here – but a good deal of the problem lies in the unhealthy water marine animals are now forced to occupy.

This blog is not going to try to solve all the world’s problems. Plenty of great books exist that can enlighten you on these big questions. What we will try to do, however, is point out why you should be green in your little hole in the water.

No matter how you look at it, this planet we live on is a closed system. The only thing that gets in is a life- sustaining dose of sunlight. Other than some of this light bouncing back into space, a little heat, and some upper atmosphere gases, everything else that is made, used, and disposed of on Earth stays on Earth. Mankind is the only member of Nature, and yes we are animals after all, that has created an unsustainable way of life. Everywhere else in the natural world organisms live and die in harmony with the planet. Non-human organisms grow, nourish themselves, create recyclable waste, reproduce, and in death, release their vital elements back into the sytem.

The circle of life works – it has allowed life to flourish on this planet for millions of years. And yet, human beings have somehow forgotten the rules. We produce an overwhelming volume of toxins and wastes that harm the system. More on this later, but how advanced can we really claim to be when we alone are poisoning everyone and everything around us?

Being green can take many forms, but at the heart of it all, being green means trying to live our lives as members of the circle of life. While we may try to convince ourselves that Man has evolved beyond the necessity of adhering to these basic rules, in the end, the logic and processes of a closed system are bound to catch up to us if we don’t.