Bluewater to Become Volvo Ocean Race’s Official Water Provider, Race Sponsor and Sustainability Program Partner

Volvo Ocean Race today named Bluewater, a world leading water purification company, its official water provider during the Race’s 2017-18 competition. Bluewater will provide high-quality, ‘on-demand’ safe drinking water to sailors, and visitors and at Race Villages in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Auckland, Itajaí, Newport, Cardiff, Gothenburg and The Hague.

Bluewater water purification solutions generate contaminant-free clean drinking water on-demand both at home and for a broad spectrum of commercial and municipal applications from restaurants and hotels to water reuse public hydration stations. Bluewater has already played a big part in delivering clean drinking water for visitors to the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in drought stricken Cape Town, South Africa.

After years of severe drought, Cape Town was unable to meet public demand for drinking water from municipal sources,. The crisis led to Bluewater harnessing its advanced water purification technologies to reuse non-potable water to generate pristine water from four water stations able to deliver up to 32,000 liters of water per day and thus avoid the use of up to 50,000 single-use plastic bottles.

“Bluewater’s engagement in Cape Town and our ongoing relationship with the Volvo Ocean Race will allow us to showcase how our leading-edge, safe and reliable technology delivers safe drinking water, even from sources previously considered unsafe for human consumption such as grey water,” said Anders Jacobson, co-founder and chief executive of Blue AB, the sustainability-focused holding company that owns Bluewater.

Anne-Cecile Turner, Sustainability Programme Leader for the Volvo Ocean Race, said: “We are delighted that Bluewater has joined the Volvo Ocean Race as our official water provider. Their innovative purified water solution will supply clean drinking water and significantly reduce single-use plastics at all our stopovers.

“By embedding sustainability into every aspect of the race we are committed to maximising our positive impact, minimising our footprint and leaving a valuable legacy that will inspire others to join our campaign for plastic-free, clean seas.”

Bluewater founder, Bengt Rittri, a Swedish environmental entrepreneur, noted that water supplies are critical in many regions of the planet, including advanced countries like the United States and China, and can be contaminated by toxic metals, hormone disrupting chemicals and micro plastics.

“We want to show how our technology can help improve access to clean drinking water as we travel around the planet with the Volvo Ocean Race and thereby contribute to drastically reducing consumption of single-use plastic water bottles,” Bengt said. He said it was unacceptable that throwaway plastic bottles are shipped from one side of the world to another in their billions, polluting air and ocean environments, the food and water people drink, and, ultimately, human bodies.
Anders Jacobson said working with the Volvo Ocean Race enables Bluewater to leverage the Race’s global platform to address a planet-wide problem at a local level.

“More people attend sporting events than go to business, science or environmental conferences and the Volvo Ocean Race is a huge opportunity to raise awareness around drinking water issues, especially plastic pollution, and demonstrate our existing solutions,” said Anders. He praised the Volvo Ocean Race sustainability program saying it firmly aligned with Bluewater’s own belief ethos that business can be a force for good in society.

“Our mission at Bluewater is to provide access to clean water to everyone, everywhere on the planet. Bluewater believes that human ingenuity can play a critical role in helping to deliver clean drinking water by leveraging existing solutions that can mitigate the plastics threat,” said Anders.