VILAMOURA

During ZB Racing’s winter training in Vilamoura, Portugal they have made it their mission to clean one bag of plastic per day. About 1,800 Liters of plastic could be collected from the shoreline and boat park, ensuring proper disposing for the litter.

We have separated the CleanUps in three categories. The shoreline, the boat park and the river. We have discovered hotspots, clusters and developed ways to tackle polluters. Most of the pollution discovered on the coast was coming from the fishing industry, with single use plastic on the second place. In the boat park the main polluters are the sailors themselves, which was hard to see for us. High performance sailing means each and every part of the boat must always function and be tuned to the maximum. Therefore the materials are often renewed and the old material is often left behind. The majority of pollution we found was bits of rope, tape and screws followed by single us plastic from food and drinks. On our CleanUps on the river we primarily discovered single use plastic bags and wrapping of food and drinks.

On this regard we want to point out that our mission during our CleanUps is not solely cleaning the environment but tackling the pollution as a whole. Discovering main polluters and pollution types helps analyse how to solve the problem. For the future we have already installed one solution, organising boat park CleanUps to collectively prevent the plastic from getting into the sea.

For the broader future it has become our mission to develop alternative solutions to single use plastic in sailing and other industries and help prevent the industries like the fishing industry from polluting our playground.