Sustainability With FatStick
FatStick has been changing the way we work for many years. There's no such thing as perfect, and we strive to make a positive impact and are proud to be the most outspoken UK brand to champion safety, accessibility and sustainability.
In 2018, we were one of the first brands to remove single use plastic from our inflatable boards. We replaced the plastic that couldn't be reused or recycled and replaced it with paper to protect the boards deck pads and card to protect the heavier duty parts of the board itself.
We partnered with Tree Nation and began planting a tree for every board sold and adding to the FatStick Forest. Choosing the important projects, we began our planting project.
We didn't want this to be all we did when it came to our impact on the environment. Offsetting is OK, but it's not great. Ultimately, there is still CO2 being produced, so it became important that we reduced our impact with different practices, more stringent processes and better choices.
We are now one of the only UK brands to produce our boards with minimal if not, zero plastic in our supply chain - and we're proud to show this in our behind the scenes footage of our visits to our factories.
Making the Changes
A great example of the complexity surrounded by the whole topic of becoming less impactive to the environment is trying to get a factory that produces over 10,000 paddles a month to stop bagging them in plastic. Our paddles made up a small percentage of this, yet we had to stop them shipping our paddles in plastic.
By visiting the factory and working with our factory that produces our boards, we came up with a solution. Bags! Material bags that can be made in our factory, sent to the paddle factory, the paddle factory pack our paddles in the material bags and these paddles get added to our board packages.
The beauty is, our paddle board factory now offers this service to all their customers and most have changed.
Our Inflatables & Harboards are packed and shipped with zero Single Use Plastic.
The Next Step In Our Journey
We’re proud to announce our partnership with Ocean Co., a global movement dedicated to collecting 7 billion ocean-bound plastic bottles by 2025.
Did you know that a staggering 2 million kilograms of plastic enter our oceans each day? That's equivalent to a truckload of plastic every single minute. Without action, by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in our waters.
Through Ocean Co., we’ve committed to remove 1kg of ocean bound plastic for every board and robe sold whilst supporting livelihoods in coastal regions around the world where plastic pollution is worst.
Plastic is collected by locals from some of the worst affected coastal communities such as the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India and Indonesia, who then exchange the plastic for money or receive digital credit to swap for tuition, tech goods, healthcare etc. Our collaborative efforts are strengthened with support from partners like Plastic Bank, Plastics for Change, and rePurpose. They establish collection points and guarantee secure, traceable transactions for collectors.
Track our journey and see our real-time impact here on our impact dashboard https://weareocean.co/dashboard/fatstick
