Action on Waste

When considering single-use plastic water bottles and water consumed on board our yachts, the figures quickly become remarkable. The amount of water our bodies need varies according to our age, body shape, diet, and weather conditions. But in the sunny climate that most of our bases enjoy, the recommended daily intake is 1.5 litres of water per day per person. With almost 40,000 guests enjoying a week’s sailing each year, we are looking at over half a million litres of drinking water required as a minimum. Given that some of our customers sail for two or three weeks, the tonnes of single-use plastic consumed inevitably accumulate. We are excited to share that we have now introduced water purification technology into our newest catamaran models. Sunsail and The Moorings now offer drinking water directly from the tap to eliminate the need for our customers to bring any single-use plastic bottled water onboard.

This is not a simple filter, but a technology developed by General Ecology called “Structured Matrix”, which, without chemicals or electricity, eliminates all microbiological risks and chemical contamination and produces water that is crystal clear and drinkable.

More than one hundred of our catamarans and power catamarans are already equipped with a water purifier. Using the new water purifiers instead of purchasing single-use plastic bottles saves around 8 tonnes of single-use plastic per year globally, which is fantastic news. If you are chartering an exclusive plus/premier plus catamaran or power catamaran, you can be confident that this will be onboard for you to use. We are currently reviewing our monohull fleet and are looking to retrofit our newest models with a water purifier in the coming months. Stand by for updates on this topic.

Firstly, we engaged and worked with our landlord to understand our energy suppliers, and we are pleased to say that, as a building, we have switched to a green energy tariff. We have changed a lot of small things, such as ensuring we have dairy alternative milk available in the kitchen, ensuring all our cleaning products are cruelty-free and eco-friendly, and encouraging staff to use reusable shopping bags and water bottles to avoid buying plastic. We even encourage staff to take the used coffee grounds from the kitchen so they can be used in the garden at home.

However, our biggest achievements have been around waste management. At-home recycling is standard practice in the UK; therefore, we wanted to ensure our teams had the same thought processes while in the office. We increased signage around the office and provided staff with further education on recycling and the different types of waste to ensure things were placed in the correct areas. We have introduced Terracycle bins to allow soft plastics to be collected and recycled too. We also worked with our landlords on the waste management solutions that were in place. In addition to separating our waste, we are pleased to share that we are officially a zero-waste to landfill office. This means that all waste, in addition to recycling, that is created none of this will end up in a landfill. Instead, this waste is sent to a recovery facility in the UK and Northern Europe, where it is used as a fuel to generate electricity.

We are now using our Sustainable Workplace policy and guidance to look at all of our offices around the world to mirror as many of the good practices we have established in the UK as possible. We are excited to share our progress in due course.