Sustainability and environmental awareness goals in the Global Solo Challenge
by Global Solo Challenge 2 May 2024 11:41 BST
Global Solo Challenge, skippers, friends, organisers © Global Solo Challenge
TÜV Thüringen congratulates the organization and participants for their achievements in the Global Solo Challenge.
In July 2023, The Global Solo Challenge (GSC) announced that it had achieved ISO 20121:2012 certification, issued independent certification body and industry leader TÜV Thüringen, awarded for Sustainable Event Management, positioning it among the first sailing events to have adopted organizational aspects and principles on a path of continuous evaluation and monitoring of its own sustainable event management.
TÜV Thüringen confirms that: "Throughout the various stages of the event, compliance with the ISO 20121:2013 standard for the Management of Sustainable events, as well as additional good practices required by the event regulations were respected by all participants and the organisers. Therefore, we wish to congratulate the Global Solo Challenge for this achievement, Marco Nannini and his team, all the event participants, both those who were forced to retire as well as those who successfully completed their circumnavigation: Philippe Delamare, Cole Brauer, Andrea Mura, Riccardo Tosetto, François Gouin, and David Linger, with a special wish for Louis Robein in the hope that he may complete his extraordinary navigation.
Given the type and duration of the event, the verification of the compliance with the standard was conducted in two phases: first before the departure, and subsequently after the participants' arrival. Our auditor Giovanni Marmini was able to verify compliance with the sustainability principles defined during the organization phase and before departure. All participants respected the commitments involved, specifically: encouraging the use of existing boats, the use of alternative energy sources (wind/solar to power onboard instrumentation), minimizing waste production and its disposal on land. From the point of view of the organizers, the majority of the work of the team was performed remotely.
We hope that this approach towards sustainability will be followed and furthered in the next edition, attracting more participants and audience, and that the format proposed by the Global Solo Challenge can be used as inspiration to the organisers of other events for greater event sustainability and environmental awareness."
Marco Nannini, organiser, commented: "We feel we have succeeded in our goal of creating an inclusive and sustainable event that offers value in the reuse of existing boats, especially those that may have become obsolete in their respective classes due to continuous technological advancements which give some boats a very short competitive life span. The event requires a fraction of the budgets necessary to campaign the most popular offshore boats, and especially if we look at round the world events.
In addition to financial sustainability and the rules that skippers had to comply with regarding energy production and appropriate disposal of plastics and other rubbish, a circumnavigation without stopovers has a fairly limited organiser's logistics environmental impact. We have greatly valued the encouragement, monitoring and third-party validation of the achievement of our goals by TÜV Thüringen, and our commitment to all aspects of sustainability of the Global Solo Challenge is renewed for the next edition in 2027-2028."
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