Why John Lawrie Metals is Sustainability Sponsor for the Tall Ships Race

By Dave Weston

The Tall Ships are coming.

Over the coming days, Aberdeen will be transformed into a carnival. The Tall Ships festival promises to showcase our city’s rich maritime history, but, crucially, will also give us a chance to display some of the terrific, modern, forward-thinking work that is going on in the region.

We’re proud to be the event’s sustainability sponsors. From fully sustainable food and drink stands, powered by fossil-free fuel that cuts emissions by up to 90%, and offering free water stations to reduce plastic waste, the efforts being taking to make this event as environmentally friendly and the most sustainable Tall Ships Race held to date are admirable.

Aberdeen is a city that is at the heart of the energy transition and ensuring that steps are taken to protect our planet for the next generation is a value that is embedded in our cultural fabric. With so much of the population working on the frontlines in the energy sector, we see day in, day out the hard work that is being done to ensure a sustainable future.

At John Lawrie Metals, sustainability is the very foundation of everything we do. With metal being one of the few resources that is infinitely recyclable, our recycling and decommissioning work allows us to support a circular economy and move away from a ‘use once and throw away’ mindset. This significantly reduces natural resource waste, energy consumption and environmental impact.

The ability to re-use, repurpose, or recycle an item saves significant amounts of natural resources, energy, and the environmental impact that goes with obtaining the raw materials in the first place. At this very moment, our current consumption of resources is unsustainable. With some resources, such as precious metals and rare earth minerals, our demand for these for use in batteries for example requires us to be thinking about how we recycle such items to recover the raw materials for their continued manufacture.

When the opportunity to sponsor the Tall Ships came up, we jumped at it. Seeing the ships in the harbour will be an unforgettable sight and our long-standing close ties with Port of Aberdeen and the fact that the ships have sailed here from Dunkerque, the location of another major ArcelorMittal facility, makes this event more special for us.

In decades to come, when hopefully the fruits of today’s sustainability efforts are borne, these coming days will remain a fond memory for everyone who attended.

And knowing that we played a small part in that means the world to us.