EFPT and Starboard Team up for the Planet

At Starboard we are extremely happy to have been able to start a co-operation with the EFPT this year and managed to help them make the last two EFPT tour stops Carbon Neutral. We are equally proud to see the efforts the EFPT puts in to make the events plastic-free​.

Which are the ways that you like to engage with this topic? Are you collecting trash off the beaches? Stopped using plastic, take trains for longer journeys, or maybe are planting your own share of trees to offset some of your Carbon Footprint? Let us know in the comments below we would love to hear from you.

We caught up with Tasmin Chilcott, Eco Project Manager at Starboard to find out more about Starboard BLUE:

Here at Starboard we are a team of two but the environmental focus doesn’t just stop at two of us. The whole company has focus on the environment, right from our research and development team and future designs, our workshop team who have eliminated single-use plastic and our office culture. Spanning out from Starboard HQ we have teams and partners working with us to help us reach the same goal, to protect the earth and to have the blue vision to nurture what we can. Starboard are supporting SUP and Windsurf events across the world as well as the Munich OutDoor By ISPO exhibition. The SUP Head of The Dart was supported back in April where we planted 13 Mangrove trees with Worldview Foundation, Myanmar to absorb 12.774 tons of CO2 and we have British SUP Club Championships and the Nautic Show 2019 in the pipeline. To this date Starboard has 500,000 mangrove trees in the ground!

Our vision is to keep enjoying the playground we love and have fun in. We know this comes as a cost to nature but we can help nature recover and give it a helping hand where we can. For the EFPT we will continue to make these events carbon neutral and in the future we can aim to make them 10 X Climate Net Positive by calculating for everyones travel and the events electricity usage and then planting 10 times as many trees than actual emissions. Therefore absorbing for a lot more than emitted from the event but also emitting from what is produced for some stages of our life. We can come together and heal what has been damaged by humans in nature.

The Starboard team riders are well aware of the effect that all the emissions of their travel have on the planet and are happy to contribute their part. We talked to Steven Van Broeckhoven (Starboard/Gunsails) and U16 EFPT Champion Lennart Neubauer (Starboard) in Silvaplana about the cooperation of the EFPT with Starboard:

With all the forms being handed in, the final calculation for the last two events has been a rounded amount of 75 Tons of CO2 emissions distributed over the participants, crew and organisers. A 10% increase has been included for any abnormalities. Per ton of CO2, Starboard agreed to plant one mangrove tree, which means they will plant 75 trees in order to make the EFPT event in Switzerland, as well as the EFPT DAM-X in Holland, carbon neutral.

We are so proud on the outcome of this project so far and cannot wait to work together even closer with the team of Starboard, aiming to make the whole tour carbon-neutral for 2020. Furthermore we’ll work on organising beach clean-ups as well as motivating local organisers to consider sustainable ways to provide water and food for the crew and riders. Planet earth is our playground - let’s all work together to save it. Even if it’s just small steps - if everyone contributes a little bit, we can make a big impact all together.

More info: https://windsurf.star-board.com/starboard-steps-up-to-make-efpt-carbon-neutral/

Video by Adam Sims/Aalvaa Media