After participating at the annual political festival in Arendal, the President of Parliament, Tone Wilhemsen Trøen swung by Vollen Marina to meet with us and talk about entrepreneurship, emissions challenges in recreational boating and political tools that are used to promote sustainable solutions and behavior.
The sun was out, when we gave Trøen a tour of our development projects FastTrack and ToxiClean. We look forward to inviting you back and keep you posted on our progression!
Here are the key takeaways we want politicians to commit to:
- Make it attractive and favorable for marinas and boat owners to select and invest in solutions that enable 0-emission below the waterline. For a boat owner that means converting to a non toxic coating. For a marina, that means to invest in an approved wastewater treatment solution that will put an immediate stop to emissions from annual hull maintenance on land.
- Make it illegal to dump wastewater from annual hull maintenance on land directly into the ocean without going through an approved wastewater treatment. A sand filter is not enough to stop neither heavy metals, nor micro plastics from hull paint.
- Sweden has had a stick and carrot mechanism in place for 10 years already through their LOVA-bidrag. It’s about time Norway – “the Ocean Nation” puts their money where their mouth is, and become a green leader in this field. A bold and clear message from the government will fuel innovation.
