SeaAhead Catches up with 11th Hour Racing to Discuss the BlueGreen Innovation Challenge
SeaAhead’s Program Manager, Taylor Witkin, caught up with Todd McGuire, Managing Director of 11th Hour Racing, to discuss the organization’s role in Rhode Island’s sustainable future, and support for the RI BlueGreen Innovation Challenge.
Todd McGuire grew up sailing at the Greenwich Bay Sailing Association in East Greenwich, RI. Prior to joining the 11th Hour Racing team, Todd worked for 14 years in the corporate world, spending all of his free time sailing competitively. When the opportunity came to work on a new kind of sailing sponsorship, and to work on an America’s Cup, he made one of those life-changing decisions you hear about and jumped at the opportunity. Sailing is Todd’s true passion in life and you will see him sailing anywhere from a weeknight series in his hometown of Newport, RI to larger regattas around the world.
Amory Ross | 11th Hour Racing
Taylor Witkin: 11th Hour Racing works with the sailing community and maritime industries to advance solutions and practices that protect and restore the health of our ocean. Can you tell us a bit about why you think the sport of sailing makes a good platform promoting ocean sustainability?
Todd McGuire: Sailors and sailing have been connecting our continents for centuries. Sailing is also powered by a renewable resource—the wind—and has led to discovery, global trade, science and recreation for a significant period of our history. It’s still a great way for connecting people all over the world. I think sailing also provides a unique global perspective of the ocean to sport fans. While most people experience the ocean from the beach and swimming near the shore, sailors are out in the middle of the ocean and have the power to virtually bring their fans along with them—through photos, videos and social media. By becoming part of the athletes’ journey and adventure, fans get to view the ocean and the natural environment from a different perspective—they see the ocean from within. It is much harder to care for something that you can’t see.
TW: What do you think are the biggest priorities right now in ocean-related sustainability?
TM: There are so many issues affecting our oceans—ocean acidification, sea level rise, overfishing, pollution—it’s really impossible to pinpoint a single one. However, if I had to choose one area of priority, it would be education. While science and data are telling us what’s happening to our planet, we also need to understand how our individual and collective behaviors are affecting the health of our oceans. With knowledge comes responsibility, so education is really the key to unlocking solutions, whether big or small.
TW: Why did you choose to support the BlueGreen Innovation Challenge?
TM: At 11th Hour Racing we “think globally and act locally”, and the BlueGreen Challenge firmly supports this approach, starting from our home state of Rhode Island. The challenge engages the local student community to provide solutions to local problems which are linked to global issues, such as climate change, ocean acidification, ocean plastic pollution. Our small state of Rhode Island can really set a global example.
TW: Following up on that, what excites you about student-led innovation?
TM: The students are a great resource for us here in Rhode Island. They’re looking at challenges with a fresh set of eyes and a unique perspective so it’s nice to be able to support their ideas and innovations. We’re expecting to see solutions in a variety of fields, from tried-and-true systems like composting food waste, to electrifying the ferry fleet in Narragansett Bay. Enabling the students to have a voice and to broadcast that voice throughout the rest of the state, and globally, is really valuable.
TW: Many of the activities that 11th Hour Racing supports could be sources of inspiration for the Challenge. I want to ask you about two of them specifically. Let’s start with Healthy Soils, Healthy Seas a project run by Clean Ocean Access. Can you explain briefly what that project is and the aspects of that program you think might be relevant?
TM: We believe that protecting our ocean actually starts on land. Healthy Soils Healthy Seas Rhode Island, is a composting initiative supported by an 11th Hour Racing grant to Clean Ocean Access, a nonprofit based in Middletown, Rhode Island. This program addresses two important issues that Rhode Island is facing—the lack of space and the impacts of climate change. We’re the smallest state in the union and our local landfill is on track to reach capacity by 2034. The shocking statistic is that organic waste makes up over 30 percent of what ends up in our landfill. If we can change people’s behaviors, we can really make a positive impact.
And the math is simple: by composting food waste, not only can we increase the lifespan of our landfill, but we can also actively fight climate change. One reason why it’s so important to divert food waste from the landfill—which a lot of people are unaware of—is that once the organic compostable waste goes into the landfill, it generates methane gas, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. When food waste goes to landfill, you’re not only losing all the benefits that compost provides to our soil, but you’re also contributing to climate change by generating more greenhouse gases. We need to bring those nutrients back into our soil with a circular approach by composting.
TW: Speaking of a circular approach, you also support MarineShift360. What’s behind that program and how does it drive our shift toward a circular economy?
TM: MarineShift360 is an international collaboration that aims to drive sustainable design and manufacturing in the marine industry. The purpose-built Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool will enable the user to evaluate and compare materials and processes, investigate alternatives, and drive innovation to allow informed, environmentally, and economically sustainable choices.
A Life Cycle Assessment is a way to understand the resource footprint of a product over its entire lifetime. The tool will use industry-wide, reliable datasets to compare choices and investigate alternatives at the design stage to increase efficiency and reduce costs without compromising on performance.
At the end of the day, the goal is to empower the marine industry to fully understand the environmental footprint of its products and enable a shift to a circular economy. This is critical for business and is driven by potential future environmental legislation, consumer demand, and the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. While this approach has been implemented by other industries such as the automotive industry for quite some time, it hasn’t been a priority yet for marine businesses.
TW: In January, Governor Raimondo set some ambitious climate and clean energy goals for Rhode Island. Namely 100% renewable electricity by 2030. How do you see Rhode Island’s maritime industries, and any of the work you support, fitting into that goal?
TM: First off, Rhode Island needs some kudos, since it is leading the charge with the first offshore wind farm in the US. That’s a fantastic feather in our cap.
But I’d like to go back to the education piece. If we want to enact change at scale, we need to invest in our youth and grow their talent. One of our key programmatic areas at 11th Hour Racing is ocean literacy & stewardship—increasing the understanding and appreciation of the importance of healthy oceans and waterways to communities through experiential learning, citizen science, and powerful story-telling. The students that are exposed to our programs, whether at Sail Newport or Community Boating in New Bedford and Providence, and many others across the US, get to understand how our systems are interconnected, and how the way we manage our land and ocean has a huge impact on the health of people and the planet.
We also support and advocate for the use of renewable energy in the events that we sponsor, and support projects that are putting electric engines on power boats—an example of new technologies that are needed in order to stop relying on burning fossil fuels.
TW: The BlueGreen Challenge is designed to connect systems in Rhode Island that often siloed—its food and energy and transportation systems, ports, the offshore wind sector, and others. Why do you think it’s important to try to connect these key systems?
TM: Whether it’s agriculture, watersheds, energy, transportation, all these systems are interconnected. We can’t approach solutions in silos, so we need an integrated vision. It’s important for everyone to understand how the decisions we make on land impact our other resources, such as Narragansett Bay. We can start with our local environment here in Rhode Island and understand how decisions we make in the agriculture sector are going to impact what happens in the marine industry. For example, if we educate people about the fact that fertilizers used on lawns affect algae blooms in our bay, which in turn affect the local economy, we can make a tangible connection between personal behavior and environmental impact, and we can offer a tangible solution to mitigate and solve the problem at the source.
Getting back to our mantra, “think globally, act locally,” this isn’t just about Rhode Island. The planet is interconnected. It is part of our mission to educate people with tangible evidence.
TW: What do you hope students take away from their experience in the BlueGreen Innovation Challenge
TM: I hope they have fun working with their teams and coming up with innovative solutions. I hope they see themselves as the future leaders of our state, our nation and our planet. I would actually like to take a line from Senator Whitehouse who said that we have been ‘takers of our environment and our oceans for too long and it’s now time for us to become caretakers of our planet.’
TW: I think it’s always good to quote Senator Whitehouse.
TM: Yeah, you can't go wrong there!