End-of-Life Boats: Boat DIGEST results unveiled at final conference in Brussels
The final Boat DIGEST conference took place on 23 September in Brussels. The closing event of the 2-year initiative on safe dismantling procedures for boats, which presented the general overview on the end-of-life boats (ELB) and the main project outcomes, was hosted by one of the project dissemination partners, European Boating Industry.
Boat DIGEST gave more visibility to the work carried out by 9 partners from Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and UK. While challenges are still remaining, especially when it comes to financing models of dismantling ELBs, as concluded during the conference, some concrete steps have been taken by Boat DIGEST to facilitate further actions in future.
Looking at how to safely dispose of a boat, Boat DIGEST developed an online and free of charge training course for the professional staff working at waste management facilities and having to treat boats. The training contains 4 units covering administrative, financial and practical issues. An online test verifies the dismantlers’ knowledge and if over 70% of answers are correct, a certificate is issued by University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland), one of the project partners. Another useful outcome is the regularly updated dismantling network map which helps identify and locate professional dismantling sites in Europe. In order to raise awareness among the nautical community, several actions were carried out and tools are now available: four sets of guidelines targeting various groups; posters (for owners & dismantlers); an awareness raising module for users and educational videos (last two accessible via “Training modules” in the top right corner of www.boatdigest.eu
It is worth adding that even though the Boat DIGEST project formally ends now, the website will continue to run for at least 5 years, after the project has been finalised, so all the materials will remain available here. Moreover, if you are a boat owner or dismantler, you can still contribute to the e-pilot exercise by going to “Training modules” in the top right corner of our website.