The 9th annual Perfect Chapter powered by Billabong is about to become the first ever Portuguese-based surf contest to reach the carbon neutral footprint.

The event’s organization is teaming up with Reflora Initiative, an environmental startup committed to calculating, reducing and offsetting the carbon footprint of its partners. After getting a detailed report from Reflora, containing essential information about all the event’s emissions, the event’s organizers together with the main sponsors (Billabong, Corona, Go Chill, Joaquim Chaves Saúde, Electrikfatbike, Cascais City Council and UF Carcavelos-Parede) will be investing in a major Green project with a significant impact on climate, biodiversity and community.

With this compensatory investment – allocated in the Castañeros Project, an environmental and community intervention program located in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest – the Perfect Chapter powered by Billabong will be neutralizing its footprint through the conservation of 1700 m2 for the next 30 years, protecting 320+ million trees, facilitating the cultivation of sustainable forestry, funding research programs to evaluate the local flora and fauna, donating technology and equipment destined to forest preservation and regeneration, funding certificated training in fire management and forest cultivation and benefiting 400+ local families.

“By bringing some of the best tube riders to Portugal, all from the four corners of the world, we knew that our carbon footprint would be significant”, the organizer Rui Costa says. “It became decisive for us to revert the environmental impact generated by our event by finding compensatory ways to preserve the planet and, by extension, the oceans, which is where the Perfect Chapter takes place and the shared home of all of us surfers”, he concludes.

As a complement to this initiative, the event’s organization is encouraging sponsors to mitigate the consumption of plastic-based advertising materials. The winners’ trophies are eco-friendly, produced manually by Rider Manuel Kogia mostly out of wood found in the sea. Throughout the event’s day, a beach cleanup will be taking place, all waste will be properly separated and prepared for recycling and all surpluses will be donated to local organizations, thus reducing food waste.