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!