Clean Sailors podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

As we know, sails are strong and durable, built to withstand some of Earth’s toughest environments; UV light, saltwater and wind.

Made from complex synthetic materials, sails aren’t formally recycled anywhere in the world with over 97% of them heading to landfill or incineration.

But what if we used these huge sheets of hardy textiles for good?

What if we used spent sails to help shelter refugees, the homeless and those displaced by politics and natural disasters?

In this episode we are joined by Angela Abshier, founder of Sail to Shelter, achieving just that.

A worthy listen, I'm sure you will agree.

And, if you've an old sail remember to head to our ReSail by Clean Sailors platform to find your closest drop-off. Old sails can be made into new things 👍

End of life boats...

With an estimated 30,000 tons of composite waste from old boats being discarded in European landfills annually, alone, we know this continues to be an issue or an opportunity for the marine industry and beyond.

In this episode host Holly is joined by Jeroen Wats, former champion sailor and now composite revolutionist to discuss the environmental impact of composite materials and how, through his company, ExoTechnologies, he's looking at the state of art solutions to address the problem, namely a bullet-proof, lightweight, super strong and fully recyclable composite.

Sails, like many things, have a long history. From papyrus leaves or animal hide rigged to catch the wind to today's highly complex highly engineered sail cloth, designed to withstand some of the toughest environments on our planet. With no formal recycling for end-of-life sails, anywhere in the world, we speak with Dede De Luca, Co-founder and CEO of OneSails, on the evolution of sail technology, why end-of-life materials are so complicated, and his top tips for looking after our sails.

Did you know that each year, in the UK alone, we flush more than 22,000 tonnes of glue down our loos? Each time we flush toilet paper, we are potentially adding thousands of microplastics to our waters. Joining our host, Holly, is Dave Hamlet, Managing Director of Tanki, the glue-free toilet roll , to discuss the makings of toilet roll, the impact of our daily flushes on our waters and how a simple switch by us all, on land and at sea, can help lessen our impact.

It’s easy to think that all fish belong in the sea. But not all fish belong in all parts of the sea….

Threatening local ecosystems, disrupting and at times eradicating other species entirely and even disrupting economies, our boats, large and small, can transport different creatures around our waters, and at times, across whole oceans.

In this episode, we’ll be looking how species spread across our planet, just what this costs us and how the warming of our oceans is likely to make this even more pronounced..

Joining our host, Holly, is marine spatial ecologist and all-round conservation superstar, Dr Alexandra Davies. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta and a true expert on this very matter.

'Microplastics' - we've all heard of them and over the last two years alone, have become aware of just how pervasive these tiny pieces of plastic are within our environment, and our human bodies… In this episode, we speak with Dr. Christopher Pham and Dr. Roman Lehner, two eminent scientists who study the very topic of microplastics, to help us better understand the plastic soup upon which we sail, soup we can’t see so well from above the waterline. Focusing on our recent sailing expedition mid-Atlantic, around the plastic-rich waters of the Azores, we look at how microplastics are created, just how far they have got, and Dr. Lehner’s pioneering research on how they may be interacting with our very cell structures…

For thousands of years, we've been building boats. We began, and indeed continued for centuries, with wood, but since the mass-commercialisation of plastic since the late 1940's, we've been making boats from glass or fibre-reinforced plastics.

Building new boats this way is carbon-intensive plus there is little, if any, formal process in the world for these huge plastic hulls when they come to the end of their lives.

In this episode, we speak with Friedrich Deimann and his Co-Managing Director, Jan Paul Schirmer, of Greenboats - a German-based team with big ambitions, building boats in a cleaner and more efficient way.

Our emission of greenhouse gases, namely significant amounts of Co2 over several hundred years, is altering our climate. We often turn to trees and replanting vegetation, Green Carbon, as the opportunity to recapture carbon from our atmosphere, but coastal ecosystems are exceptionally apt at carbon capture and storage, too - almost more effective than the Green Carbon counterpart.

In this episode we speak with Lucy McMahon, Marine and Coastal Scientist and ocean optimist, about Blue Carbon; what it means, how effective our Blue ecosystems are at moderating our planetary climate, and why we need to protect them.

With studies showing that traditional antifoul paint on the bottom of our boats is contributing extraordinary amounts of chemicals and microplastics to our waters, the case for biocide-free and paint-free solutions is high. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Rik Breur, winner of the European Inventor Award 2019, material scientist and founder of revolutionary antifoul product, Finsulate, about why we should care about our bottoms and how nature inspired his solution to this ocean pollution problem.

Being on our boats we are living directly in one of THE MOST important ecosystems on our planet, alongside an array of habitats and hosts of species and marine fauna. It makes sense, then, that what we do on and around the water has a pretty immediate impact on the health of our oceans.

In this episode we speak with Angus Johnston, Co-founder of Ecoworks, about ‘greywater’ and what it means when most drains lead to the sea...