Sail Barbary Is an Eco-Friendly Company

Sail Barbary

Jun 25, 2025

2 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Sustainability isn't a side project for Sail Barbary. It's the reason the boat is electric in the first place. Here's what being eco-friendly looks like on board, day to day.

It started with an electric yacht

Sail Barbary developed its electric yacht in 2010, with one goal: cut the carbon emissions that come with running a boat on the lake. Today the Barbary is New Zealand's only commercial electric yacht.

What began as a way to reduce emissions has grown into the value that guides everything we do. When the Barbary is under sail or electric power, there's no diesel engine, no fumes and no engine noise, so you get a quieter, cleaner cruise and the lake gets a lighter footprint.

Measuring our footprint, then offsetting it

You can't reduce what you don't measure. We use the EKOS carbon calculator to measure our emissions and we offset both of our boats through the EKOS programme.

It's a simple step, but it means we know where our emissions come from and we take responsibility for them.

Cutting waste on board

Small changes add up on a boat, where everything you bring on board has to come off again. A few of the things we do:

Recycled cups. Our cups came from the local hospice shop. Remember the hard-wearing Arcoroc cups from the 1980s? They're still going strong on the Barbary.
Waste separation. We sort rubbish on board so as little as possible ends up in landfill, and we've said goodbye to plastic bin liners.
Bring your own bottle. We encourage guests to bring their own drink bottles, so there are fewer single-use bottles on the lake.

Learning alongside other Taupō operators

Sail Barbary took part in a 12-week sustainable tourism programme run by Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) and Love Taupō, alongside other local tourism businesses. The group learnt together and shared the sustainability work each business was doing. You can read more about it in our sustainable tourism programme post.