Hi, my name is Jon.

I’m supporting Tall Ships Youth Trust (TSYT) with assessing opportunities to improve its sustainability. I’m also a volunteer Mate and have been lucky enough to sail with TSYT on numerous voyages working alongside young people and adults. This has been a fantastic opportunity to witness first-hand the fantastic work the charity does.

Last summer, I undertook a voluntary internship with TSYT to consider the sustainability challenges for the organisation. An outcome of this has been the recent formation of a sustainability working group, which comprises of shore and sea-based staff and volunteers. Our focus is on activities on and off shore, looking what we can do as individuals, teams and at an organisational level within TSYT’s activities.

Sustainability is a challenging and multi-faceted area that has recently begun to attract a lot of attention in the media. Society is grappling with the challenge of meeting our needs now without compromising future generations’ ability to do the same. I’ve been focused on trying to achieve some ‘quick wins’ and also, to help TSYT plan for the future and strategically embed sustainability.

We’re working closely with the operations and sailing team to look at ways to reduce the footprint of the boats while on voyages. Sue Geary, an experienced TSYT Skipper and I, have been working on ways we can improve the amount of recycling onboard.

We’re also embarking on a trial to refill bottles of cleaning fluids rather than buy new plastic bottles each time along with providing segregated recycling onboard. We realise it’s a bit of a change from what voyagers are used to and hope that engaging young people in this work will further enhance their voyage experience with TSYT. Challenger 2 is our test boat for this green project and we plan to roll out the same initiatives across the fleet this year.

On a recent youth voyage with Limes College, it was great to have some thought-provoking conversations onboard about sustainability. These included talking about plastic in the ocean and how we can reduce this. Another interesting discussion took place around meat consumption and how people felt about reducing the amount they eat to help reduce their carbon footprint. 

I’m excited to see what we can achieve as we embark on our journey towards a more sustainable future. If you’d like to support with this, please contact us at info@tallships.org

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