Sustainability award shortlist announced for Leaders In Sport awards
We are proud to be sponsoring the Sustainability category at the 2022 Leaders in Sport Awards for the second year.
The finalists have now been announced for this inspiring category, which identifies those organisations that have demonstrated an incredible use of sport to promote and combat environmental and ecological issues within society.
As a leading ambassador for sustainability within the group travel sector, this award is a natural fit for our business and we are excited to both sponsor the award and have our Managing Director, Matt Warren, join the judging panel. Here we give a summary of the five organisations that have made the shortlist.
THE ARSENAL FOREST By Arsenal Football Club and CarbonLink
The Arsenal Forest is a partnership scheme between Arsenal Football Club and CarbonLink, which encourages supporters to help offset carbon production. CarbonLink calculated that a total of 12,500 trees will need to planted over the season to offset the carbon consumption of the matchday programme, each absorbing 20kg of CO2 over the next 10 years. Supporters can buy tree packages, which will be planted in Bore in Kenya’s Coast Province. The Arsenal Forest scheme benefits the Bore community by providing employment opportunities, income for education, cash crops, and fenced, protected vegetation.
THE PLANET LEAGUE By Planet League
The Planet League is a behaviour-tech platform that encourages football fans to use the power of sport to drive climate change. Fans can sign up to represent their club and score goals by completing green actions in fixtures against other clubs, including activities around food, energy, water, transport, waste and nature. So far, The Planet League has recruited 73 clubs including 18 from the Premier League, reached over 5,000 households and 18,000 fans, who have taken 77,000 verified green actions, resulting in reductions of approximately 360 tonnes of CO2.
SAREAK – REAL SOCIEDAD FOUNDATION By Real Sociedad Foundation, Panthalassa, City Council and Gipuzkoa Football Federation
The Real Sociedad Foundation launched the Sareak project in 2019, rescuing unused nets from the bottom of the sea and the ports of Gipuzkoa to recycle them into soccer goal nets. Carried out with the collaboration of la Real Sociedad’s underwater activities section, the Sareak project seeks to recycle the 640,000 tons of fishing nets that are ending up on the ocean floor beds every year, impacting on the seabed and marine fauna.
CLIMATE PLEDGE ARENA By OVG, The Climate Pledge, ME Engineers, McLennan Design and Populous
Global Advisory, Development and Investment Company Oak View Group was approved to redevelop and manage 56-year-old Key Arena in Seattle in 2018, re-opening it as Climate Pledge Arena in October 2021. After just 10 months of operation, the Climate Pledge Arena has hosted an array of professional sporting events, diverting a total of 301 tons of waste from landfill, generating 167,733.4 kwh of on-site renewable energy, and collecting over 160,000 gallons of rainwater from the Arenas Rain-to-Rink system.
WORLD SURF LEAGUE / WE ARE ONE OCEAN By World Surf League
The World Surf League (WSL) founded the nonprofit WSL PURE and has announced a series of sustainability commitments in 2019 that set a new standard for global professional sports. This includes: becoming carbon neutral globally, eliminating single-serve plastics at our events, investing in local communities through activations and an annual grant program. WSL is also a participant and 2018 signatory to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, and launched a global initiative in 2021 called ‘We Are One Ocean’, with the goal of bringing people together to care about the issue of ocean conservation and preserve the future of surfing. WSL continue to make an impact in spaces around coastal restoration and conservation, reducing plastics and climate change.
We are thrilled to see some of the spectacular efforts from the sports industry to help deliver real sustainable change, and look forward to hearing more about the incredible work being done at the awards ceremony as part of Leaders Week on 27 September 2022.
Read more about the shortlist on the Leaders in Sport Awards website.
