[Footprint] Sustainable Maintenance

This morning I decided to try and rescue our clothes drying rack from going to the dump. It is steel with a plastic coating which is rapidly falling off and, if you aren't careful, causing rust stains to appear on clothes!

The obvious course of action is to get the plastic off and paint a Hammerite coating over the whole thing. As usual this made me think about what the ideal situation was with regards to repairing things. I don't think that Hammerite can be called sustainable!

Many things can't be sustainably repaired, or even sustainably maintained (what kinds of greases and oils are you going to need for maintenance?). Yesterday I was spray painting a bit of our old car - I happened to have some paint hanging around from before I got so concerned about sustainability and the environment. I'm not sure that a car can be considered in any way sustainable and the same goes for repairs to the thing too!

So if I cast my mind around I think about olde worlde methods of manufacture - carpentry being the most obvious potentially sustainable method of manufacture. Carpentry lends itself well to sustainable repairs too. I guess ceramics are a next stop - clay for example - but probably only necessary where water resistance is needed (wood isn't terribly water resistant - although it can be treated with natural oils).

Unfortunately I don't think that I'm going to come up with any real answers here, just a challenge to myself and to you regarding taking maintenance for granted and not giving it any thought. We really need to re-engineer our lifestyles quite completely with a view to manufacture and maintenance. I guess that I'm going to have a look at the bamboo options due to my potential supply of the stuff (thanks Dad!).