Published on: 25 February 2021
The Green Blue has been receiving increasing enquiries from recreational boaters about marinas, boatyards and harbours with facilities that contribute to improving environmental standards. This includes pump out facilities, recycling and capture systems in boatyards and hoist docks for antifoul, etc.
In response, The Green Blue relaunched its popular Pump Out Directory as The Environmental Facilities Directory on its website at the end of last year. The directory lists coastal and inland marinas, boatyards and harbours who have registered their environmental facilities with The Green Blue. Their locations and facilities have been added to an interactive map on The Green Blue website to enable boat users to locate and identify their nearest environmental facilities.
Since its launch last September, the Environmental Facilities Directory has been one of the most visited pages on the website along with The Green Blue Business Directory, that is helping to promote more sustainable products and services provided by British Marine members. The Green Blue team have been getting increased requests for up to date and expanded directories and many recreational boaters are making it a priority to choose marine businesses that support them in making their boating more environmentally sustainable.
If you are a marina, boatyard or harbour that has an environmental facility on site and want to be added to the Environmental Facilities Directory, please register it with The Green Blue using their online registration form. Please note, if you have multiple sites, please register each site separately to enable The Green Blue to create a detailed map of site locations and facilities available at each.
In addition, if you would like your more sustainable marine product or service to be considered for the Green Blue Business Directory, then please complete this online application form.
As well as the Directories, The Green Blue has an array of information and resources to support marine businesses to be environmentally sustainable and to raise awareness and best practice within boating communities. Please take some time to check the website for reminders of resources available:
- Facilities and Operations Guidance including the Environmental Legal Register
- Antifoul Campaign poster and leaflets
- Invasive Species Prevention, Stop the Spread Campaign resources
- Boating Wildlife Awareness Resources
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Sea-changers, a marine conservation charity, is collaborating with The Green Blue to encourage clubs, centres and marine businesses to apply to their Coastal Fountain Fund to provide water refill points for their customers, to help them avoid using single use plastic drinks bottles.
The purpose of the fund is to reduce the impact of single-use plastic water bottles on coastal habitats by funding communities to purchase water drinking fountains and install them for use by the public in busy or environmentally important areas.
Grants of up to £2,000 are available, per applicant, towards the cost of a fountain.
Applications are welcomed from not-for-profit organisations who have identified a need and are well-placed to get the stakeholder involvement needed to make the project a success.
The closing date for applications is 15 March 2021. Further information is available here.