This week we celebrate our 40th podcast with a very special episode, providing expertise and insight from three of sport’s most knowledgeable and respected sustainability champions. Instead of the usual interview format, this episode features the recording from a panel at this month’s Sport Positive Summit in which Julie Duffus (Olympic Movement sustainability senior manager for the IOC), Omar Mitchell (the NHL’s VP of sustainable infrastructure and growth initiatives), and Jonathan Smith (found...
Oct 14, 2020•43 min•Ep. 40
Hosting a large conference is a challenge at the best of times. Logistics, marketing, speaker liaison – the list of tasks needed to be fulfilled for an event to run smoothly – let alone be successful – can appear to be overwhelming. Throw a global pandemic into the mix, and the challenge becomes a mountain to climb. That’s why the sport and sustainability movement – and sports industry in general – is lucky to have Claire Poole, who battled against the obstacles 2020 threw in her way to host a s...
Oct 06, 2020•35 min•Ep. 39
There’s only a handful of people to have ever lived who can claim to have competed at both a Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Oluseyi Smith is one of them. But even though he excelled as an athlete across multiple disciplines, his retirement from professional sport has brought him to what he believes is his true calling: engineering. Or, more specifically, engineering with a sharp focus on sustainability. However, during this episode of The Sustainability Report Podcast, Smith talks about one of...
Sep 29, 2020•39 min•Ep. 38
Science. Technology. Ethics. Art and design. Culture. Media. Olympic sport. Just some of the topics that this week’s podcast guest, Professor Andy Miah, counts within his sphere of expertise and interests. Specifically for this episode, we’ll be focusing on innovation in the sports industry – primarily sustainable innovation – and what news tech and ways of thinking are best placed to help the sector generate engagement, become more financially sustainable, and less of a burden on the planet’s r...
Sep 22, 2020•38 min•Ep. 37
Next year, Afridun Amu hopes to represent Afghanistan in the Tokyo Olympic Games’ surfing competition. Amu is already the first person to compete for the landlocked, war-torn nation internationally in the sport and, in doing so, has overcome a unique set of challenges. It’s no surprise, then, that Amu is also a thought leader and coach in design thinking – a concept that enables individuals and organisations to approach complex (or ‘wicked’) problems with a different thought process to the tradi...
Sep 15, 2020•38 min•Ep. 36
Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on several elements of public life, the job market included, with so many people being made redundant and businesses closing down. So it’s a nice change of pace to hear a story about someone who has recently started a new venture that is thriving. Particularly when that new venture brings together sustainability and sport. Vanessa Nord has done exactly that, and in a short space of time has brought sustainability to the forefront of the mind of organisations...
Sep 08, 2020•34 min•Ep. 35
Legacy. Whenever the subject of a major sporting tournament – past, present or future – is brought up, the subject of legacy has to be explored. Traditionally, that legacy has tended to focus on economic impact of hosting a tournament and sport participation rates (if they’ve increased as a direct result). And while Jon Dutton, the chief executive of the upcoming Rugby League World Cup, would love for the 2021 tournament in England to have a positive impact on both, they’re not the be-all and en...
Sep 01, 2020•39 min•Ep. 34
The ‘well building’ is the new ‘green building’. Sustainability in the corporate real estate industry has gone up a notch and, rather than just focusing on the environmental sustainability credentials of a building, the way the building impacts the people that occupy it has become a serious consideration. Air quality, daylight, colour-schemes and healthy food options are important factors for workplaces to consider. There’s no shortage of data to demonstrate that a healthy working environment is...
Aug 25, 2020•48 min•Ep. 33
There’s an old saying that many people in sport are familiar with: that athletes die twice instead of once – the first time, when their professional sports career is over. But although leaving their teammates, fans and coaches can be the most overwhelming and scary point of their lives, Danielle Berman is sure that transitioning sportspeople can thrive as they take the first steps into their new lives. Berman is the founder of Tackle What’s Next, a platform and community that helps athletes navi...
Aug 18, 2020•34 min•Ep. 32
Since Nelson Mandela said that sport had the power to change the world, his words have been used countless times to illustrate sport’s potential to do good – to the point that his moving speech 20 years ago has almost become a cliché. But Neill Duffy, the founder of 17 Sport – the world’s first sports impact agency – is adamant that those words are as true today as they were two decades ago – but sport has to step up to fulfil that vision. Sport’s business model, he says, is complacent and lazy,...
Aug 10, 2020•44 min
In June this year, the Green Sports Alliance was meant to be celebrating its 10-year anniversary at its annual summit, this time hosted in Minneapolis. But, like so many events occurring in 2020, the gathering was curtailed by the Covid-19 crisis. The world – and the US in particular – is a different place and, in many ways, the remit of the Green Sports Alliance has grown as a result. While its original raison d’être revolved around the greening of teams and leagues it’s associated with (the or...
Aug 04, 2020•47 min•Ep. 30
Cast your mind back to 2008 – a year largely remembered for the global economic crisis that caused panic and uncertainty. With the economy in tatters, it probably didn’t seem like the best time to strike out and start a new business. But that’s exactly what Jaime Nack – this week’s guest – did. Not only that, but her fledgling consultancy, Three Squares Inc, specialised in something called ‘sustainability’ – a concept that was not even close to going mainstream yet. The year 2008 was also a year...
Jul 28, 2020•43 min•Ep. 29
In 2016, US publication Sports Business Journal reported that only 11% of sports organisations had a formal strategic plan in place. The number with a standalone sustainability strategy is probably even smaller. A significant proportion of companies on the stock market publish non-financial reports every year and, with many of these organisations involved in sport in some way (either suppliers or commercial partners), it’s becoming inevitable that sports entities will have to follow suit sooner ...
Jul 21, 2020•39 min•Ep. 28
Innovation and ambition are two words that are synonymous with Formula 1. Sustainability not so much – at least until now. But that could all be about to change. Since being acquired by Liberty Global outright in 2017, the popular motoracing format has undergone something of a transformation, at least on the business side. Now, reducing its carbon emissions and becoming a bastion of sustainability within the sports industry is one of its aims. To be exact, Formula 1 has the explicit objective of...
Jul 14, 2020•39 min•Ep. 27
Athlete health and wellbeing has become a topic of growing importance in sport, particularly in the fields of mental health and safeguarding. However, one of the factors that has the potential to be truly detrimental to athlete health and performance is being overlooked by most. Poor air quality is responsible for the deaths of seven million people per year, according to the World Health Organization, with four million of those deaths attributed to outdoor air pollution. Athletes who train outsi...
Jul 07, 2020•41 min•Ep. 26
When ‘sport’ and ‘science’ are juxtaposed together in the same sentence, there’s almost an assumption that we’re talking about medicine, fitness or physiotherapy. But when Extreme E (the off-road electric car racing series and sister of Formula E) revealed its Scientific Committee to investigate the impact climate change was having on the race locations, the intersection of science and sport took on a whole other meaning. Alongside landmark projects in the Amazon Rainforest, Greenland, Senegal a...
Jun 30, 2020•35 min•Ep. 25
“There is not one problem that does exist or will exist that cannot be solved by a motivated generation of young people.” That’s probably the stand-out quote from this week’s guest, Jesse Lovejoy, who as the director of the San Francisco 49ers EDU programme designs and oversees a large-scale STEAM (science, technology, education, art and maths) education programme that engages thousands of children in the Bay Arena every year. STEAM education, he says, not only empowers young people but it helps...
Jun 23, 2020•45 min•Ep. 24
Despite the focus of the world being firmly fixed on the continuing coronavirus pandemic and social and racial divisions in the US, World Water Day last week was a good opportunity to acknowledge other major issues facing the planet, in this case the many crises being experienced by our largest bodies of water. After spending more than two decades as a competitive sailor, Damian Foxall is all-too-aware of the damage being caused to the ocean by plastics and climate change. Now after transitionin...
Jun 16, 2020•50 min•Ep. 23
Embedding sustainability into organisational culture is made possible by empowering the individual. According to Terry Cecil, the same is true of creating sponsorships that are ethical and sustainable in every sense of the word. In this week’s episode, the president and chief executive of the International Sponsor Council makes his case for a sustainability professional being at the heart of each sponsorship team from the very inception of a project. That way, the sponsor can make sure it does a...
Jun 09, 2020•45 min•Ep. 22
If you’d have mentioned purposeful/cause/sustainable sponsorship in the sports industry 20 years ago, chances are you would have drawn a number of blank looks. But this week’s guest, Kevin Bartram, did just that when, venturing out on his own in the late-90s, he decided that sport sponsorship should be about more than just money and exposure. There was a real chance, he saw, for brands and sports properties to do good while achieving their own objectives. During this episode, Bartram discusses h...
Jun 02, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 21
Greenwashing. Pinkwashing. Wokewashing. Nobody wants their brand to be accused of anything to do with -washing. But it’s not just about what an organisation does itself – it’s also about the activities of the companies and individuals that organisation is associated with. Money, of course, is what primarily drives sponsorship, but increasingly sponsored properties (such as sports teams, leagues and federations) are beginning to understand that being financially lucrative cannot be the sole crite...
May 26, 2020•42 min•Ep. 20
When marketing executives of major brands start putting together sponsorship campaigns and activations, they should take a leaf out of Benjamin Franklin’s book and ask: “What good shall I do this day?” That’s according to John Balkam, the author of 3-Win Sponsorship, a book that plots the history of modern sports marketing to its present era, which revolves around purpose and values. According to Balkam, only those brands that have evolved to focus on the three-win model of sponsorship – a win f...
May 19, 2020•47 min•Ep. 19
In 2003, when the Cardiff Half Marathon was first established (alongside a marathon event), 1,200 people turned up to the starting line aiming for a shot at glory. Fast-forward to 2019, and that number has mushroomed to around 20,000. From half marathons and marathons to Iron Man contests, the popularity of mass participation events has surged over the past few years although, in the current environment, it’s difficult to predict when it will be safe to host another one. Nevertheless, while the ...
May 12, 2020•43 min•Ep. 18
“Keep the tree-hugging hippies out of the stadium!" “Let God handle the environment.” “I appreciate the (team’s) environmental initiatives, but I think (if you go) too far on environmental issues, things start to get political.” These are just some of the responses provided by highly-identified fans of a well-known US sports franchise when asked about their view of the team’s environmental initiatives. The study, conducted by Tim Kellison and Beth Cianfrone of Georgia State University, found tha...
May 05, 2020•42 min•Ep. 17
What do baseball and cross-country skiing have in common? Nothing really, apart from the fact that both sports are facing significant challenges – even existential threat – because of extreme weather brought on by climate change. Research undertaken by Sport Ecology Group co-director Madeleine Orr paints an uncomfortable picture for both sports. But the fact is that baseball and skiing are not alone – practically every sport (and, by extension, every sports organisation) is being impacted, and w...
Apr 28, 2020•40 min•Ep. 16
Because of sport's intrinsic relationship to the natural world, many of us assume that fans of sport will care more about the environment and be more aware of the dangers it faces. But a piece of research conducted by Seattle University professors, Brian McCullough and Galen Trail, has found that differences between sports fans’ and non sports fans’ approach to the environment is “non existent”. Surprising, right? And for those trying to use sport as a tool to engage the wider population in envi...
Apr 21, 2020•47 min•Ep. 15
Two years ago, The Sustainability Report featured an interview with this week’s guest in which she described her first sustainability gig – voluntarily greening the Women’s Field Hockey World Cup in England. Since then, Joie Leigh’s career in sustainability has gone from strength to strength. She has successfully transitioned from elite sport to life as a sustainability professional with strategic firm Carbon Intelligence, with a stint implementing sustainability operations at the Netball World ...
Mar 31, 2020•38 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Last year, 19 current and former elite athletes wrote an open letter to The Guardian newspaper calling on other sportspeople to follow the example set by Greta Thunberg and use their platform to demand strong climate action from governments and industry. Katie Rood, fresh from signing for Lewes Community Football Club (the only club in the world to allocate the same resources to male and female football), was one of the signatories. Rood has consistently used her online (and offline) presence to...
Mar 24, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Most surfers will tell you that their pastime is far more than a sport. It’s a way of life. A way of being. Surfing’s intimate relationship with the ocean and environment is clear. So it’s no surprise that its premier competition, the World Surf League, is winning plaudits for its impactful and innovative sustainability initiatives. Through its nonprofit arm, WSL Pure (which has its own podcast ), the World Surf League has committed to carbon neutrality, eliminating all single-use plastics from ...
Mar 18, 2020•32 min•Season 2Ep. 3
It’s fitting that in Paris, the home of the landmark 2015 Climate Agreement, sports contribution to addressing the evolving climate crisis was one of the standout discussions during the inaugural Global Sports Week . More than that, it was a chance to discover how major sporting institutions like the International Olympic Committee and a major events like the Paris 2024 Olympic Games could work with commercial or strategic partners to find solutions to the environmental challenges we are all fac...
Mar 10, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 2
