Our Ethics
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Our Ethics
We spend our lives playing in the most beautiful waters on the planet. The least we can do is fight to protect them.
Here at Neptune SUP HQ, our environmental impact isn’t an afterthought; it’s something we think about deeply and take real, tangible action on. If we’re not careful, we risk ruining this incredible natural world for generations to come. And that’s simply not something we’re willing to accept.
Back in 2016, we commissioned carbon-balancing specialists Go Balance to conduct a detailed Life Cycle Assessment of Neptune SUP and our products. This wasn’t just a box-ticking exercise; it was one of the first-ever reports of its kind in the SUP industry, calculating not just the carbon cost of building a board but its entire life cycle from start to finish.
The findings gave us a clear picture of our carbon footprint. And with that clarity came a clear decision: we would carbon balance every single SUP board and paddle we sell, including everything we’d sold before we even knew our footprint. No half measures.
As far as we know, we were the first SUP brand to do this. Some others have since followed. Some have made token gestures. And sadly, some are still doing nothing.
It means we’ve taken concrete steps to offset the full carbon footprint of every one of our boards and paddles; no exceptions.
And we want to be honest here: it’s not as simple as planting a tree. If you don’t know your actual footprint, you can’t truly offset it. That’s why the Life Cycle Assessment was so important; it gave us the numbers we needed to purchase exactly the right amount of carbon credits to balance what we put out.
It’s also one of the reasons we made the difficult decision to stop making and selling inflatable boards. It felt wrong to claim environmental credentials while selling a product that, at its core, is a very large piece of single-use plastic. We’d rather do less and do it right.
We don’t just buy carbon credits, we choose where those credits go very carefully.
We’re proud to support the Trocano Araretama Conservation Project, a REDD+ initiative in the Borba municipality of the Amazonas state in Brazil. In simple terms, we’ve invested in protecting a rainforest, ensuring it won’t be farmed or destroyed, and that it continues to generate the positive environmental impact our planet so desperately needs.
The numbers behind this project are staggering in the best possible way:
Water is the lifeblood of these communities — which is exactly why this project resonated so deeply with us. As people who live for the water, we felt that supporting a project where water is so central was the most natural fit in the world.
The project complies with the Natural Forest Standard (NFS), a voluntary carbon standard that integrates carbon, biodiversity, and social impact, because real environmental action should benefit people and the planet.
Carbon balancing our boards was an important step. But for us, it was never going to be enough.
The more time you spend on the water, the more you feel the urgency of what’s happening to our natural world. Climate anxiety is real, and it’s something so many of us experience — that overwhelming feeling of wanting to do something but not knowing where to start, or whether anything you do will actually make a difference.
That feeling is exactly what inspired our very own Alex Burrows to found Project Demeter, the eco-arm of Neptune SUP, and we’re enormously proud to be associated with it.
Project Demeter’s mission is beautifully simple: Connect people with the organisations and initiatives that are already doing incredible things for our natural world.
There is so much good work happening out there. So many passionate people, brilliant projects, and meaningful causes, but it can be hard to find them, hard to know which ones are credible, and hard to know how you fit into the picture.
Project Demeter is a resource, a community, and a rallying call for anyone who cares about the planet and wants to channel that care into something positive, without feeling overwhelmed.
It’s especially for you if you’ve ever thought “I want to help, but I don’t know how.”
Because here’s the truth: You don’t have to do everything. You just have to do something.
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Plus, you’ll also receive our Project Demeter Manifesto full of ways to live life more sustainably and make a difference.