Searching for Stove Fuel

A digression from our look at plastics, and how to minimize their presence in our lives - this is about our search for the proper fuel for our alcohol stove, and what we learned that you should know.

We had several reasons for choosing to buy a non-pressurized alcohol stove for our galley. Safety - alcohol is one of the safest fuels, one that can be dispelled using water. Availabity of fuel - at the time, we could find the proper fuel on sale in hardware stores in much of North America. Cost - when not purchased through marine stores, our stove’s fuel was reasonably inexpensive. Durability - our stove needs only refilling and cleaning, and there is little to wear out or need replacing.

When we left for the Atlantic islands - the Azores, Porto Santo, the Canaries - we expected to be able to find stove fuel relatively easily, and knew that if we did not find exactly what we were looking for we would at least be able to find substitutes. In the end, substitutes were what we used, looking for the highest percentage of alcohol possible in whatever form of alcohol we purchased. Our difficulty finding the right stuff may have been partly because of our difficulty asking for what we needed; but part of it was because of the substitution of methanol for ethanol as the type of alcohol being sold for marine stoves.

Methanol, ethanol, what’s the difference, they’re all alcohol, right? Well, as it turns out, wrong. Our first clue was when we consulted my brother, a chemical engineer, about the different alcohols, and he asked that we avoid using methanol.

Methanol is very toxic - not just when burned, but when it sits around waiting to be used. Chemists treat it with respect, handling it carefully and avoiding breathing its fumes. And yet it is being sold as fuel for marine stoves, which are generally used in enclosed spaces by people who are unlikely to be aware of potential problems.

To further confuse matters, the ethanol based fuel which should be used in those stoves has a variety of names, some of which refer to the customary use of a small percentage of methanol in the fuel to make the alcohol too poisonous to drink. Depending where you are and who you are talking to, ethanol with 5% to 10% methanol mixed in may be called methylated spirits or metho, and is therefore sometimes confused with the similar sounding methanol.

With the growth of the interest in ethanol as a fuel there seems to be a move to regulate its cost and distribution, affecting its use in other markets such as for stove fuel. Since our return to North America we have found denatured alcohol replaced by methanol on hardware store shelves, with the methanol clearly labelled as marine stove fuel. We have found ethanol based fuels, but they are much more expensive now and not as widely available.

Does this mean we will change our stove, perhaps switch to kerosene, diesel or propane? We have taken a serious look at these alternatives. However, kerosene and diesel are petrochemical products, and both price and availability will be affected by this in the future. Using propane safely would require the installation of specialized equipment and increase the time spent on maintenance to make sure that all connections were solid and leak-free. On the whole, even when we have to search for fuel, we still prefer our non-pressurized alcohol stove.

Losing the Plastics: Soaps

So to soaps. As we know, shampoos and conditioners and liquid soaps come packaged in plastic bottles. But they are also available in bar form - and you can buy them from people who use fair trade sources to buy their ingredients. Here is what we learned about bar soaps in general:

Most soaps are made by a process called saponification, which uses an alkali called lye that reacts with oil to produce soap. Many commercial bars have the glycerin resulting from this process removed to be put to other uses - unfortunately for us, since glycerin helps our skin stay healthy. So while these soaps may be very good at cleaning the skin, they are drying and tend to leave a residue behind which can be irritating to the skin. Glycerin soaps, to which glycerin has been added or from which it has not been removed, (usually transparent) are kinder to the skin. Syndet bars such as Dove are made from synthetic surfactants, and are said to be the mildest on the skin. Some bars combine synthetic surfactants with other ingredients to try to get the best of both worlds.

Syndet bars sound like a good way to go - except that the surfactants may be created from petroleum products. While this may become less and less the case as petroleum products increase in price, it did make me decide to look around at another alternative - soaps with glycerin that are made from natural oils bought through Fair Trade suppliers. This adds another dimension to the decision - trying to buy from sources who work to make sure those who actually produce the crops we are buying get paid well and fairly for their work. While we were looking around, we found our way by word of mouth to SimplyByAmanda, where we found soaps and body butters handmade from fair trade ingredients. And as another bonus, no plastic packaging. Through SimplyByAmanda we found our way to Grass Roots, where a shampoo and conditioner bar is available. One set of answers to our dilemma...

We also decided to do something about our laundry detergent. Liquid laundry detergent comes in plastic bottles - but powdered detergent does not. On the other hand, powdered detergent needs to be kept dry, something which is not always easy on a boat. So we decided to buy powdered detergent (phosphate free, of course) and transfer it to the plastic bottles we had originally had the liquid detergent in - hopefully, that will be a workable solution. And there are also bars of laundry soap available here or in the islands, so we’ll keep that in mind as we cruise too.

We’ve also decided to avoid those single-use throwaway plastics that are so much a part of life in so many places in the world. Here, we can recycle many of them, and it’s an easy enough decision to pay attention to the packages we buy and make sure that things we purchase are packaged in the kind of plastic which can be recycled. But we will not always be here, and even where it is available recycling uses energy which is becoming increasingly costly, both financially and environmentally. So we also decided to pay attention to buying things which are not packaged in plastic, in some cases not packaged at all.

We’ve started small. Since we began cruising we’ve used our backpacks to transport groceries to and from the boat, so using them without first putting things in plastic bags is not much of a stretch and makes us feel better. Though it does sometimes feel as if we have to beat the cashier to the packing... Happily the Farmer’s Market will be opening soon, and we can join the throngs already using their own bags there, and have good fresh vegetables and fruit beside.

A few small steps down the road, and we are still experimenting and looking around. And thinking about so much more - how to handle our garbage in places where good garbage disposal does not exist (we’d rather not see it come drifting back in from the sea); changing our engine to electric; what fuels to use to cook and heat. We’ll let you know what we’re thinking and planning and how things turn out...

Tackling the Question of Plastic

An assessment of the many things we buy that are packaged in plastic is eye-opening. Food, personal care items, cleaning stuff - a lot of it comes to us from the store wrapped, encased and stored in plastic. A look around the bathroom reveals liquid soaps, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, bathroom cleaners, toothpaste - and that does not include things like toothbrushes and razors, which are disposable in whole or in part. In the kitchen, food containers, dish detergent bottles, various storage containers, laundry soap container - all plastic. The medicine cabinet is full of plastic bottles and tubes. And of course many of the things we use are made of plastic too. So the first thing to do is to make some decisions about what it is sensible for us to try and change, and what we will live with - at least for now, unless and until we learn of other solutions.

Reuse and recycle - two of the words that are supposed to help us reduce garbage, and a good place to start from here. The reuse of plastic containers is limited by the space available to store those reused containers in, and that is particularly true on the boat where space and efficient storage are always the prime consideration. And by their usefulness for the purpose contemplated. There is a good side to this: on board plastic can keep goods normally stored in paper or cardboard dry and free of creatures or mould. Bulk goods packed in smaller containers may stay fresh longer, since I can bring out small portions at a time and the whole won’t be exposed every time a container is opened. And repackaging reduces the chance of finding that unexpected hitchhikers have arrived with the cardboard you brought aboard - like cockroaches, a pet hate of ours.

Recycling is easier is some places than others, and there are places where it is not available at all. Even where it is available it is often limited to only some types of plastics; and sometimes those plastics travel a long way to get to the facilities where they are broken down to be reused, which means that they use even more resources. So recycling is an option only some of the time and with only some plastic containers. At this point recycling is only a partial solution.

Any plastic that is not reused or recycled is going to end up in the garbage, wherever we go. And from wherever we leave it it may make its way to a garbage dump or into the water and to the sea, where it will continue to drift around until it ends up in the belly of some sea-creature or part of the plastic island in the Pacific. (See information on the plastic garbage island) We really hate to contribute to that.

At this point the best option seems to be to cut down as much as possible on buying goods and groceries packaged in plastic. In some cases, this means changing what we buy - bar soaps instead of liquid soap and shampoo, powdered detergent (phosphate free, of course) instead of liquid, and bar soap for hand washing clothes. Which means doing some research on different kinds of soaps and what they are best used for. In other cases, buying concentrated forms of products like cleaning liquids would help reduce the number of containers which are incidentally purchased along with them. In some cases making our own things is a help - making our own yogurt, for instance. And finding the things we need packaged in different ways may be an option too. The thought of doing some of our own canning is one we can explore, but the use of fuel and our need to purchase some of the equipment would make it an expensive endeavour.

Time to make a start - might as well start with learning more about soaps.

Setting Out, Toward A Smaller Boatprint

When you travel and live, as we now do, on oceans and along coast lines, you see things that were not part of the expectations, the dreams that set you on this path. I remember leaving Miami once and passing garbage and cast offs as we sailed away - plastic bottles, balloons, bits of wood, even a chest of drawers floating along. Far out on the ocean we have passed chunks of styrofoam, plastic crates, all kinds of plastic packaging, more balloons, more bottles, as well as the lost fishing and mooring buoys that weather or circumstance have torn away from where they were intended to be. We have seen plastic bags floating under the surface close to beaches, even lying on the bottom as we snorkel near the boat. Add to that the garbage which will deteriorate more quickly, the wood and the bits of food and fabric and rope that appear from time to time (and some of that plastic), the glass that washes up on some beaches, and it seems that wherever we human beings go we leave our trails of garbage behind. And since there are a lot of us, that makes a lot of garbage. And then there is all the garbage that lies mostly invisible in and under the water - from chemical waste to human waste to the remains of things we have constructed of materials whose permanence has outlasted their usefulness. And all the remains of all the fuels we burn, exhausting into the air and water...

Pausing in Dartmouth has give us time to reflect on a lot of this. And living with the multitude of kinds of packaging that come with each thing we buy, and the ongoing discussions about reducing/reusing/recycling that are now part of life in North America has helped focus our thoughts. As well as the news about the Bisphenol-A debate and the possible implications for our health of using our Nalgene water bottles. At the same time we have been reflecting on the price of using fossil fuels - both financially and to the environment - and exploring the use of electric motors and ways to improve our collection of electrical energy from wind and sun. At this point in our lives we are ready to do more to reduce our boatprint on the environment.

As I sorted the plastics, those that could be recycled and those that could not, I started to think about how to reduce the amount of plastic passing through our lives. A look through the things we buy revealed how much is packaged and contained in one kind of plastic or another. And of course we do live in what is, essentially, a plastic boat, constructed using a combination of petrochemicals. And use tools constructed of plastics. To live completely rid of plastics would be impractical. But there have to be practical ways to reduce the packaging we acquire, a way to replace at least some of what we use now with products less packaged, or not packaged in plastic at all. And we thought about the fact that even when plastic is recycled (not possible everywhere we visit) that recycling still uses some of our world’s precious supply of energy. And the less we use the less we contribute to that supply of almost indestructible garbage, wherever it ends up. Figuring out what we will do, and doing it, will be a good place to start.

So over the next little while we will be evaluating what we do now and what we hope to do while thinking about how to reduce the impact of our life on the environment around us, exploring what is possible and what is practical. We’ll keep a chronicle of our adventures, our ideas and actions and how things progress, on this blog. And talk a little bit about groups and people we meet along the way whose work is related to what we are trying to do. We hope you’ll join us in our explorations from time to time, and will be happy to hear any helpful suggestions and ideas you have. Next blog we’ll start tackling getting some of the plastic out of our lives...