There is a great paradox at the core of yachting: we want to visit but also preserve the most beautiful areas that our world has to offer. Last year, at the Monaco Yacht Show, Robert van Tol, Co-founder & Executive Director of the Water Revolution Foundation, encapsulated our responsibility far better than I can when he said: “the sea is not only our playground, it is our primary stakeholder.” 

So, the question we need to ask is how to treat her and her inhabitants with even more respect? The Water Revolution Foundation, for one, is driven by the need to take a holistic look at sustainability, through what it calls a “lifecycle approach”. The Foundation verifies the environmental credentials when companies claim an innovation of theirs is sustainable, not just in practice but from the start through to end of life of that product – how sustainably were the materials sourced and how can they be sustainably recycled at the end of their life. 

The waters of sustainability can easily become murky; while a commitment may be well founded, but in actuality, there could be problems bookmarking each side of delivery – to give two general and very globally controversial trouble points: nuclear energy and certain minerals (lithium-ion and cobalt) necessary for EV battery packs. While certain…