Facilitating a workshop for Volvo Ocean Race’s stakeholders on sustainable event management
Volvo Ocean Race* believes in racing with purpose. With a stopover in Hong Kong, they wanted to celebrate achievements in sustainability and foster a meaningful dialogue for sustainability excellence for future events.
*This event has since been rebranded as The Ocean Race
Challenge
Held once every three years, Volvo Ocean Race* is the world’s premier offshore sailing competition. For the first time, the race route included a stopover in Hong Kong in 2018.
There was immense support from the Hong Kong community to progress and celebrate the nearly 40-year competition through a summit and workshop that communicated the growing expertise and commitment in sustainable event management.
Collaboration
In collaboration with The Hong Kong Jockey Club and Volvo Ocean Race, The Purpose Business hosted and facilitated a sustainable event management workshop on-site at the Volvo Ocean Race Village, communicating valuable sustainability expertise to industry leaders in Hong Kong. These included key stakeholders, sustainable solution suppliers, government officials, tourism board members, recyclers, composters, caterers, bar operators, club and event professionals, NGOs and sustainability groups.
As part of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to tour the race village to see how the variety of waste reduction and recycling initiatives were being implemented. This included using washable tableware, compostable food packaging and banning single-use plastic water bottles across the site as part of the race’s call to action to #TurnTheTideOnPlastic.
Impact
The inclusion of this programme saw support from a range of key partners which created the opportunity to not only celebrate current achievements in sustainability, but also foster conversations for sustainability excellence in future events.
Learn more about the successes and challenges of the Hong Kong stopover via the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 Sustainability Report on pages 146, 151 and 216.
“With the support and local knowledge of The Purpose Business we were able to take the key messages of the Ocean Summit and highlight to over 80 workshop participants about how the event was reducing or recovering materials that would otherwise ended up in Hong Kong’s landfill.”
Tour of the race village (Photo by Volvo Ocean Race)
Clear labelling of bins and the challenge of participant behaviour
First recycling station during construction of the race village
A flooded recycling station adds to the challenges