IMOCA, MarineShift360 and five of the world leading sailmakers (All Purpose, Incidence Sails, North Sails, One Sails & Quantum Sails) have developed the world’s first sail impact evaluation scheme, to assess and address the kgCO2e impact of all sails and grade them. In all, inspiring the sailmaking industry to innovate their technology around impact reduction. This is RISE (Reduced Impact Sail Evaluation).
In 2021, IMOCA learnt that for every 1kg of finished sail there was 6kg of waste produced. It was from here that IMOCA took voluntary action in beginning to reduce this impact
IMOCA called all their major sailmakers (All Purpose, Incidence Sails, North Sails, One Sails, Quantum Sails and most recently Doyle Sails) to action. We analysed a J2 sail from each sailmaker to draw up comparisons via Life Cycle Assessment - this allowed us to see that the three major hotspots in sailmaking were: waste, energy and transport.
In January 2023, IMOCA introduced the first ever Green Sail rule in world sailing. This required every team to include at least one sail in their inventory that had been manufactured under agreed environmental limits. The intention was to clean up these first three sections before tackling the fundamental technology and materials within sail production.
In the first year, overall carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 30% per kilo of finished sail, waste was reduced by a third per kilo of finished sail and, all air travel was prohibited for Green Sails from sourcing to arrival at the client.
Since the rule came in, over 80, Green Sails have been produced for IMOCA teams.
From here, the sailmakers and IMOCA wanted to go further. All sails must have an impact accounted for. This would be through a graded system (from A-E) like a nutritional score on a food product, but grading the sails on their kgCO2e impact. This is RISE.
“Two years ago North Sails started their life cycle assessment journey. The RISE (Reduced Impact Sail Evaluation) framework has helped expand and further define this process by accurately calculating the environmental footprint of our products' transportation. This information allows us to give customers and suppliers data-led knowledge on how to reduce the overall impact of sails by choosing sea/land transpiration over air which has previously been seen as the preferred method of shipping”
Jono Macbeth
Sustainability Manager, North Sails
A Mainsail in Linen for the IMOCA Groupe APICIL of Damien Seguin
Over the past two years, Damien Seguin has tested the All Purpose linen fiber mainsail, subjecting it to the equivalent of half a round-the-world journey.
Convinced by its performance, he decided to use this technology for the Vendée Globe:
The IMOCA Groupe APICIL will be the first to race around the globe with such a sail, which has a lower CO2e impact compared to the previous fiber technology.
