We’re wondering when business as usual will end.
When the brackets are first established by geographic proximity, so teams cut down on their travel (as they do in other tournaments and in other NCAA divisions).
When each team will know its carbon footprint associated with tournament play and compensate for it.
When the NCAA and its sponsors will use their bully pulpit to help Americans realize the challenges and possibilities for winning the climate game.
The University of Arkansas intercollegiate athletics and facilities management departments have instituted a recycling program for all home football and basketball games. While final numbers aren’t yet available, the program has so far produced more the 45 tons of recycled materials, diverting more than a third of the waste stream from Fayetteville area landfills. Five hundred recycling boxes have been provided by Waste Management, Inc. The program will continue through the spring’s Razorback home baseball games.
“In our first year one of the main goals is fan awareness. We want our fans to know that they have a chance to recycle their trash, not just throw it away. This year most of the recycled material has been picked up by our clean-up crews after the fans leave, but with time we expect fans will start noticing and using the green recycling boxes around the stadium and the arena.” — Justin Maland, assistant athletic director for facilities.
523
Just a couple of months ago, Boston Bruin defenseman Andrew Ference and NHLPA union leaders Paul Kelly and Eric Lindros started working with the David Suzuki Foundation to launch a Carbon Neutral Challenge. Now 523 players have pledged to purchase gold standard offsets to counter air travel for away games; road travel for home and away games; and energy used during hotel stays. The press release states that, on average, each player was found to be responsible for 10 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
806
On February 16, 2005, the day the Kyoto Protocol was ratified by 141 countries, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels launched and effort to get 141 American cities to meet or beat the greenhouse gas emission reduction target suggested for the United States in the Kyoto Protocol — 7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. Now 806 mayors of U.S. cities have made the pledge.
502
In December or 2006, four colleges and universities signed on to the American College and University Presidents Commitment, “an environmental initiative developed by Second Nature, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and ecoAmerica to address what they term ‘the defining challenge of our century—the twin crises of energy sustainability and climate change.’” Tonight, the total stands at 502.
The third edition of Carbon Down, Profits Up from the Climate Group presents the continuing trends:
Being environmentally sound is not sentimentality. It is a sound business strategy — Rupert Murdoch
(This rings nicely with Jeffrey Immelt’s contention that “this is not soft feel good, this is about making money and doing business“.)
For soccer nuts, especially those who have followed the English Premier League, it’s hard to find someone as cool as Alan Shearer. Gentleman off the field, just the right bit of nasty on it. All-time leading goal scorer. An entire career played in England (despite the lure of big money in Italy or Spain). National team glory. Fnishes his career with a drama-filled ten-year run with the club of his boyhood dreams (Newcastle).
And at a time when so many former stars are sitting on their blingly laurels, Sir Alan’s butt is on a road bike raising money for Sport Relief, the UK’s “Comic Relief” spin-off that fights poverty. In less than two weeks, Shearer and his cycling mate Adrian Chiles will be trying to ride from Newcastle to London, 335 miles, in two days. (It’s a little bit more than a Tour de France pace.) Millions of Brits are expected to watch. Maybe millions of pounds will be raised. Why something so, well, crazy?
My trip to Uganda was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I met people who are struggling to feed and take care of their children because of the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS, but saw that a little help goes a long way too.
So if you are, say, the president of major league baseball team and the league sends you memo saying “we think it’s time we all get green“, maybe you should think about calling DoRight.
And we don’t mean Dudley.
DoRight Enterprises is scaling-up sustainability consulting firms run by local 12 to 15 year-olds. They go into places like the visitor’s center of the Queens Botanical Garden and develop energy and other sustainability plans. (Did you know that so-called “livng Institutions” like botanical gardens outdraw all U.S. spectator sports combined? You can look it up.) They do the work and are provided with real world opportunities to apply the stuff they are learning.
So should a front office really call the kids? Cha’ yeah.
Squeamish about trusting such work to kids?
Then let them work with local mentoring “adults” (who will surely learn a thing or too.)
Too much ahead of the curve?
Au contraire. Totally locked in. Because what founder Scott Beal has done is combine urgent business CSR necessity (even for privately held companies) with a left-behind notion of “project-based” and “experiential” learning. Something that puts kids into the community to solve “authentic questions” for which neither teachers nor anyone else has the easy answers. Yes, it all harkens back to — dare we say it — progressive education. And guess which way the U.S. education reform pendulum is swinging 20 years after “A Nation At Risk?
Easy? No. And that’s the point.
It would actually involve helping DoRight replicate its innovative program in a team owner’s home town. A baseball front office would have to work with local schools systems, involve their community relations peeps and reach out to strategic partners to lead the establishment of such an effort. (Star•Sports can help, of course.)
Why bother?
Great PR. (Important, perhaps in the Steroids Era?) Part of the comprehensive corporate social engagement winning brands will need to stay in front.
And, oh yeah. The experience might let kids (and society at large) develop the the right dynamic for the new frontier.
Twelve leading global corporate brands — signing the Tokyo Declaration — today called for global carbon emissions to be reduced by 50 percent by 2050. (Many of the world’s most concerned scientist call for 80 percent reductions by 2030.)
At Sony, we believe that it is impossible for a business to flourish in a degraded environment,” Sir Howard (Stringer, Sony Chairman and CEO) said. “For this reason we are committed to using our technological ability and know-how to reduce our impact on the planet, and to help our customers reduce their impact at home.”
The 12: Allianz, Catalyst, Collins, Hewlett Packard, Nike, Nokia, Novo Nordisk, Sagawa, Sony, Spitsbergen Travel, Tetra-Pak and Xanterra.
Story
“I believe the American people are prepared to accept our responsibility to lead by example. Our president and Congress must begin to work together in a bipartisan fashion to make such leadership possible.”
In this regard, he said New York city has set an example by committing to emission reduction targets.
“Based on a careful assessment of what existing technology makes feasible, we determined that New York City can shrink our carbon footprint 30 percent from current levels by 2030,” he said.
According to recent report from the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, the United States ranks last among the Group of 8 nations and 39th among 149 countries in terms of environmental performance across six policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change.
“The United States’ performance indicates that the next administration must not ignore the ecosystem impacts of environmental as well as agricultural, energy and water management policies. The EPI’s climate change metrics ranking the United States alongside India and China near the bottom of the world’s table are a national disgrace.” — Gus Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Additional coverage and links to press release and executive summary can be found at enewsusa.
World class standards for event greening established by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, and partner organizations. It is drawn from the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the WSSD’s 22,000 delegates.
The basic principles of greening” major events that should be incorporated by the host organization include:
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