Our first speaker series of 2022 kicked off with a topic that has been a priority for our members for many years - sustainability. While there's no clear definition of sustainable sustainability, Dr. Marcus Eriksen from 5 Gyres Institute summed it up with this simple message of "do no harm." This simple yet powerful statement can help guide your business sustainability journey.

Our panelists, which included Amanda Chinchelli from Seea, Wes Carter from A New Earth Project, Chris Evans from Vissla and Dr. Marcus Eriksen from The 5 Gyres Institute, and moderator Derek Sabori of The Underswell shared valuable insights in addition to their own journeys of the challenges and opportunities they've experienced within their organizations.

Here are a few key highlights that stood out to me and how they can help our members and the surf industry focus on taking action:

1. Our industry has an opportunity to lead on this issue and can influence other sectors to follow suit.
2. Collaboration is vital, and by bringing our members together to share knowledge, experiences, solutions, and challenges, we can move faster towards viable solutions
3. Whether it's through improving materials used in our products, minimizing packaging options, streamlining services, cleaning up our supply chains, supporting environmental organizations, grassroots activism - anything and everything is a step toward sustainable solutions.

These are just a few of the high-level points that jumped out from this conversation, but we have the audio linked below so you can listen to the event in its entirety.

SIMA's effort to bring solutions to our members is a year-round effort where members collaborate to share ideas, explore solutions, and bring them to our collective membership to implement within their operations through our Sustainable Business Alliance. 

And now, let's jump into the SIMA Speaker Series.