Recovery of old plastic small craft

Abstract

The products of today are the waste of tomorrow. Certainly this is not in everybody's mind when buying a new TV-set, a sofa or a boat, but nevertheless it is the truth.

This paper deals with plastic small craft (boats). The focus is not on the boats, but on the material: fibreglass-reinforced plastics. This is a construction material developed during the Second World War, but it was not until the 1960's that it came into general usage. Nowadays, the material is increasingly used in the transportation sector, a fact which can be attributed to the call for a reduction in fuel consumption by a decrease in weight. However, in the long run, this development is a threat to today's well-functioning systems for recycling old vehicles.

Even if old plastic small craft can be considered as a marginal problem in most countries, the material they are built of is not, at least not from a waste-handling point of view. In order to reduce demand for landfill space, finding ways of recycling fibreglassreinforced plastics is a challenge.