The boats are commonly made of carbon fibre, fibreglass and PVC foam, which take a lot of energy to produce in processes that emit carbon pollution
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The governing body for sailing is looking at how the sport's Olympic-class equipment is made, used and discarded, to eventually make changes that will reduce its environmental impact.
Alexandra Rickham, director of sustainability at World Sailing, said this first-of-a-kind life cycle assessment project will give the organisation the evidence it needs to make smarter choices and shape the future of Olympic equipment.
"Sailing naturally has a close relationship with nature, with the environment. It's seen very much as this clean, green sport using the wind," she said. "But the reality is that our equipment has an impact. It goes through some major industrial processes."
Rickham said the project could be useful not just for Olympic sailing but for the broader sailing community and potentially other sports.
Competitive sailing, an Olympic sport since 1900, involves racing boats powered by only the wind and the waves. In the 2024 Olympics, one- and two-person crews sailed boats with hulls measuring as long as 17 feet around a course marked by buoys in the Bay of Marseille.
Outside the Olympics, competitive sailors race throughout the year in local events and larger regattas.
The boats are commonly made of carbon fibre, fibreglass and PVC foam, which take a lot of energy to produce in processes that emit carbon pollution. These materials don't decompose and are challenging to recycle. So when elite sailors are done with them, the boats would need to be sold, passed onto junior sailors or sent for specialised recycling to avoid landfills.
As part of World Sailing's initiative, the sustainability consultancy Marine Futures is collecting data from boat builders about their operations and surveying athletes about how many boats, sails, masts and other gear they use, how often they replace their equipment and how they travel with their vessels.
By the end of this year, the goal is to capture the environmental impact of a four-year Olympic cycle and identify which interventions by World Sailing could make the most difference, said Ollie Taylor, director of Marine Futures.
- AP
