George Poveromo keeps the deck of his Marc VI clean enough to eat off without damaging marine life.Effective, chemically safe, and biodegradable, Starbrite satisfies your clean and green needs.
For years, the beautiful docks, decks and boats that line Florida’s thousands of miles of waterways have dazzled visitors and sightseers.
What those people aren’t seeing, however, is the destruction those wooden docks and cleaners that keep those boats so sparkly are doing to the very water they are floating on. Bleaches and other toxins from the cleaners drip into the water, creating a poisonous environment that kills sea life, as well as small plants and grasses.
With the national movement towards being more “green”, the buzzword for environmentally conscious, there are several products you can use on your boats, docks and decks, including with the construction of the latter two, that will go along way towards being environmentally conscious and preserve sea life.
Boats and cars are washed in driveways, causing direct runoff to drainage pipes in freshwater canals...
CLEANING YOUR BOAT
Perhaps the one thing people don’t think about enough is what is in the cleaner they’re using to wash down the hull and deck after a day on the water.
Bleach is a quick option and usually hanging around the house. Then there is the litany of cleaners in the store pushing themselves as deck and hull cleaners. The problem is, many of these have chemicals you wouldn’t want in your house, much less the water behind it.
Starbrite's easy to use and has no negative impacts. photo courtesy George Poveromo“You want to make something that is as ecologically friendly as possible. That means no phosphates or harsh chemicals,” said Bill Lindsey, the Vice President of Marketing for Starbrite, an environmentally sensitive cleaner developed in 1973. “Starbrite is lake-safe, it can be used while on the boat, or in the water. A lot of people think bleach is fine, it’s not going to hurt anything. But they used to chase lobsters out of reefs by squirting bleach in a hole and chasing them out the other side. The problem is that bleach is killing the reef.”
A lot of people use dishwashing detergent because it’s cheap and easy. But it has a lot of phosphates, which can lead to an algae bloom, Lindsey said.
Starbrite takes the Green movement an extra step by producing their own bottles which will break down much quicker than any of the other plastic bottle on the shelf.
The company adds its own proprietary blend of ingredients to the mixture before molding. This allows the Starbrite bottle to break down in about 5 years, as opposed to the typical 80-year life cycle of a regular plastic bottle.
“Typically, our bottles break down faster than that even,” Lindsey said. “We have the only biodegradable bottle in the marine industry. We’ve been making Green products since before it was trendy to do that.”
When it comes to preserving marine life, the makers of Starbrite Sea Safe Boat Wash are way ahead of the pack. And they’re taking it to a whole new level.
Starbrite began in 1973 as a polymer to clean automobiles. But founder Peter Dornau found the auto market too competitive. No one, it turned out, was working on the marine market. So he switched gears.
From the very beginning, Dornau made sure his cleaners were as safe as possible. That meant no bleaches or phosphates that could seep into the water and give birth to algae blooms or simply just destroy the environment around it.
...that drain out spillways into our estuaries and the ICW.
Lindsey said that even though Starbrite products don’t include bleach or phosphates, they are designed to work as well as any other cleaner on the market.
“When you walk in to the store and you want to buy a bottle of boat wash to clean your boat,” Lindsey said. “You want it to clean your boat as well as anything else on the shelf. And we have to make something that will clean your boat as well as anything on the shelf, and that is ecologically friendly.
“We want people to be of the mindset that they can get something that will work well on their boat and not kill the planet at the same time.”
Learn more about Starbrite at www.starbrite.com, and ask for it in your local boating stores.
TIPS FOR DOCKS AND DECKS
Construction of docks and decks affects the environment in almost every way imaginable.
Ken Gidney, president of Anchor Deck and Dock in Boca Raton, provides these suggestions:
- Use locally sourced concrete for pilings
- Place rip rap (broken rocks and rubble) under docks to provide habitat
- Consider a buffer zone of native riparian plants to minimize fertilizer runoff.
Gidney has seen an increase in environmentally sensitive building orders.
“Are people thinking green? No, they’re not,” Gidney said. “People are doing this stuff because they don’t want the maintenance and the green solutions are much longer lasting and durable.”
“We have the only biodegradable bottle in the marine industry. We’ve been making Green products since before it was trendy to do that.”
