Conundrum... Is building new green?

I've been having a lot of deep thought on (forgive the expression) the "Green" of things...

Having built several boats from the keel up, my first reaction to the problem of a bigger boat is always to build. Hell I like building boats!

Throw in the fact that I don't really think a lot of production boats solve the real problems of the voyaging family that lives aboard full time and want to not be camping or having to make decisions of the what we have to give away and do without scenario.

So building a new boat makes all kind of sense but I can't quite shake the niggling feeling that it might not be the right thing...

And as Spike Lee once said, "Do the right thing..." Spike Lee always makes a lot of sense!

There is a way of having your cake and eating it too... and the last couple of days my mind has been gnawing on the idea of not just rehabbing an older boat but the idea of really doing a radical re-design in the process. Throw out the old rig and gut the interior and simply rebuild it as something more suited to current needs and wants.

The Phoenix option if you will...

This approach would be no bad thing. Lord knows there are hundreds of cheap boats available that deserve a new lease on life and and a fate better than land-fill. The cost of doing a radical rebuild/redesign I'm thinking, would be no less costly at worst and more than likely, if done in a sensible and smart way (spelled cunning plan), could even be less expensive by a large factor.

The argument against, of course, is that you are only going to save the materials used in the hull (a few trees) and ballast but truth be told you are saving more than that when you think of it and the whole all or nothing idiocy we find ourselves in, where if you can't be 100% green, non-polluting, whatever you might as well go whole hog in the other direction just does not make a whole lot of sense. Right now we find ourselves in a world that needs all the help it can get and if you can't do a lot maybe you might as well do a little... It ALL adds up in the end.

So anyone know of a mastless CAL 40 in a field anywhere?