Our Mission
It is the collective mission of the 52 SUPER SERIES to:
- Implement and encourage environmentally responsible actions and initiatives from management to participants.
- Follow, adopt and promote local recycling guidelines.
- Strive to reduce waste of all types, adopt a sustainable procurement code, choose environmentally friendly products, upcycle and repurpose where possible.
- Progressively reduce its environmental footprint via practical and meaningful steps.
At any one regatta, the 52 SUPER SERIES brings together 400 people – a mixture of staff and sailors – to one location for a full week of high performance sailing. So, in 2015, the 52 SUPER SERIES made a commitment to introduce new initiatives that would start to change the way that staff, sailors, marinas and yacht clubs would interact with the environment whilst on-site. This conscious shift in thinking was further refined in 2016 and 2017, when key team members of the 52 SUPER SERIES operation aggressively targeted the core elements of the event: the water supply, waste policies, food provision, fuel usage, materials and transport.
The full list of policies and initiatives employed by the sustainability team is a long one, and one that penetrates every level of the organisation. Perhaps the biggest grand slam to date though has been the complete removal of single-use plastic bottles from the event. The acquisition of a water filtration system and the provision of reusable aluminium water bottles has, in one move, removed over 29,000 single-use water bottles from circulation each year.
In addition to this, the 52 SUPER SERIES has:
- Achieved ISO 20121 certification in sustainable event management
- Offset the total carbon footprint of all event operations (flights, electricity, water and fuel)
- Collected well over 350kg of discarded waste from beaches across the Mediterranean with the help of 300 young people
- Appointed Sustainability Ambassadors from each of the participating teams
- Removed plastic packaging from staff lunched
- Placed a high maxim on media exposure and sustainability messaging, reaching 1.7 million people in 2016
- Promoted the use of eco-friendly boat cleaning products
- Operated shuttle bus services to reduce the amount of wasted fuel
- Provided oil spill kits for teams
- Organised cycling events to promote sustainable transport
- Integrated sustainable practices into everything they do and buy, from only printing on 100%-recyclable paper to reusing event signage and cable ties.
- And much, much more!