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 for the 2016 and 2017 season, 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!