How Can You Spend More Sustainably?

 

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As individuals, there is a lot more role we could play to be more environmentally friendly rather than recycling. We need to ask ourselves, “have we thought about the impact our wallet is having on the environment”? Every day, we are accountable towards the climate crisis. What we spend on and how we spend could make the big difference to whether we are increasing or decreasing our own carbon footprint. If you want to spend more sustainably but don't know how, try following some of these tips:

How Green is your Bank?

We all are aware that fossil fuels are the worst enemy to the environment. How do you ensure that your money isn’t being spent to fund the extraction of dirty fossil fuels?

Nowadays as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) demands are on top almost all financial institutions’ agenda, it is not that difficult for you to assess which are the ethical banks out there that upholds commitments towards a low carbon economy and overall sustainable practices.

Some banks have commitments to stop investments in industries such as fossil fuels, coal and mining.

Apart from that, some banks have game up their support towards a low carbon economy by increasing their renewable and energy efficiency portfolio.

 

How Green is Your Mortgage?

A lot of banks are now making it eligible for a green mortgage for property owners that purchased energy-efficient property or that runs by renewable energy. Some banks provide attractive packages with benefits such as lower interest rates and cashback offers.

Normally, green mortgages are eligible for sustainable renovations, conversions, new self-build properties and homes.

Green mortgages also encourage a more sustainable and greener standard of living that and enables property owners to reduce their property climate footprint as well as reduction in monthly electricity bills.

 

How Green is Your Investment?

Profit is a win but gaining profit while contributing to a good cause is a win-win. It is important to align our investment with our core values of Sustainability.

Nowadays, there is an increasing demand for more transparency of where our money goes and how it is invested. The key driver of this is because there has been greater focus on ESG impacts of companies we invested in.

Sustainability and Investing is all about ensuring our money is aligned to a sound sustainable economy. In order to achieve this, we can be guided by focusing on impact investing as well as ESG and Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). There are growing markets to invest your money more sustainably such as investment that can create positive change to the community, or also investing in cleaner energy sources.

 

Have You Thought About Green Loans?

You might want to consider taking a loan for you to financing the green energy or energy-efficient home installation. This can vary from installing LED lighting to equipment that can save water consumption. Green energy the reliance on coals and fossil fuels – and you can make savings on your energy bills. Innovation in technology, bolstered by financial support from the government, means that there is an abundance of sustainable energy options, preventing pollution from clogging up the atmosphere. 

Apart from that, you can also shift towards green transportation. Increase demands for Electric Vehicles (EV) across the global market indicates that there has been a shift from consumer to be more green and contribute to lower their own carbon footprint.

Some Banks also provide lower interest to the borrowers as part of the incentives to encourage customers to minimize their environmental footprint from their own property and to purchase EVs. 

 

 

 

 

 

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ESG Quick Reminder – Embrace, You Win. Avoid, You Lose

 

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Responsibility towards Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues have surged in recent years. The central driver of this movement is Climate Change. Till this very date, there has been broad understanding amongst countries across the world that Climate Change is a real threat and the continuous rise in global carbon dioxide emissions must be addressed.

According to KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting, in 2020, that analysed the annual financial reports, corporate responsibility reports, and websites of 5,200 companies in 52 countries that provides a detailed look at global trends in sustainability reporting and offers insights for business leaders, company boards and sustainability professionals. It was found the 80% of global companies report on its ESG performance and a majority of companies worldwide have carbon targets in place.

The question is, what’s in it for companies to report on its ESG performance and targets?

 

ESG – It’s the standard of and for the future

As mentioned earlier, ESG accountability has exploded in recent years. Companies are now looking beyond financial metrics. ESG policies are meant to push companies to break away from overdependence on financial metrics, not only in ESG risk mitigation but also in strategy and business decision-making.

This could be a challenge for companies that are a few years in its ESG journey and may be a costly investment as well. At the same time, as ESG covers a wide range of areas, the key focused ESG KPIs that are unique for the company have always been one of the most highly debated topics amongst Board members and Senior Management of companies that are initiating their ESG management. However, for ESG-matured companies, especially large-cap companies, its ESG strategies are well-defined and measurable. For example, to tackle Climate Change issues arising from its operations, some companies established the ‘path to zero’ initiatives which showcase the commitment and journey towards net zero carbon emissions.

These days, it is not something new that we read on the growing trend of companies’ ESG policies and strategies as risk management as well as value creation and generation. In the United States alone, as of 2019, it was found that one out of every three dollars under professional management or approximately $17 trillion was managed in accordance with ESG metrics.

ESG metrics are not merely for compliance purposes. More and more evidences have been disclosed that showcase that ESG is not just ‘a good to have’ but instead, ESG is a crucial and strategic imperative. ESG risks can cause companies that do not factor in ESG metrics to face substantial financial impact. For example, based on an extensive four-year analysis on ESG metrics by MSCI, found that companies that are ranked with lower ESG scores experienced higher costs of capital, higher equity costs, and higher debt costs compared to companies that performed and ranked better in ESG scores.

In fact, McKinsey’s statement would best support this abovementioned finding as they have cited over two thousands studies that indicated that companies with higher ESG scores benefited a 10% lower cost of capital compared to companies with poor ESG scores. On top of that, companies with better ESG scores are said to experience lower environmental, litigation and even regulatory risks.  

 

Conclusion

Like it or not, sooner or later, all businesses are faced to confront ESG as an integral component of operating its business. Many companies that lead in its ESG journey have started reaping the financial and non-financial value from its ESG investments, and at the same time, manage to mitigate ESG risks and benefit lower operational and capital costs.

Companies are not able to avoid ESG issues anymore as ESG has proven numerous times to be a financial issue. ESG is and will continue to challenge businesses in all sectors. Thus, making ESG a factor that companies need to embrace from now onwards.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

 

 

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Sustainability 101: How to Conduct an Effective Materiality Assessment

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Introduction

Sustainability issues and topics vary across business industries. Sustainability professionals within companies or external, advocate the risks and opportunities arising from sustainability topics to pave way for better sustainability strategies, management, performance and reporting that would benefit companies, internal and external stakeholders.

In order to do so, sustainability professionals conduct sustainability materiality assessment guided by related established national and regional standards to prioritise the most important sustainability risks and opportunities to the business as well as stakeholders.

The question is, what are the basics to ensure an effective materiality assessment?

 

Sustainability 101: How to Conduct an Effective Materiality Assessment

1.       Select

Both internal and external stakeholders present valuable and diverse insights for the business, especially from key stakeholders that have high influence and dependence on the company. Hence, it is important to first, create a list of all relevant stakeholders of the company (e.g. Board members, Senior Management personnel, Heads of Divisions, etc.) and across the value chain (e.g. suppliers, customers, regulators, etc.) and identify the personnel or groups of stakeholders that understand the company and its operations so that their feedback would be credible and holistic. That being said, selecting personnel or groups of stakeholders that have historical and frequent engagements with the company, would be a good starting point.

 

2.       Initiate

After identifying who to engage with, it is best to set a time to discuss on their participation as well as the objective of the engagement. During this stage, the communication should be concise and direct for the stakeholders to understand what is exactly needed from them and how their input would help with the outcome of the materiality assessment. Depending on the stakeholder category, it does not have to be a formal meeting, but could also be done via casual talks and discussions.

 

3.       Topics

There are many ways to identify sustainability topics. International guidelines and standards have set various approaches for companies to consider when selecting the topics that are relevant to the them and industry as a whole. Companies may also refer to publicly available information such as peer reports and the media to identify the topics and issues that are applicable. At the end of day, upon coming up with the list of topics, companies should ask themselves, “Are these topics relevant to us? Are these topics relevant to us now and in the future? Are they important to our stakeholders? Do we have great impact on each of the topics?” These are some of the few questions that can guide companies to ensure the topic selection process in on the right track.

 

4.       Prepare

Ideally, materiality assessment is best to be done formally or via direct engagements with the stakeholders. This provides the time and attention to gauge their perspective that is strategic and specific that is difficult to obtain if done via surveys or informal Q&A. 

At the same time, the discussion points must be made simple and clear (as well as examples) so that stakeholders are fully aware of the topics being discussed. The reason for this is that we need to understand that not all of them understand the entire sustainability topics or even understand sustainability risks and opportunities as a whole, that could beat the purpose of obtaining their valuable insights in the first place.

 

5.       Engage

Once the materials are prepared and reviewed, it’s first good to conduct a test run of the stakeholder engagement amongst some internal stakeholders first. This will help to get their feedback for improvements that may have been missed out on, before wider stakeholder engagement is initiated. This is also a good practice to have the stakeholder engagement coordinators to be fluent or find the right rhythm during the actual engagement. The coordinators may also find it useful as they would obtain the types of questions from the stakeholders arising from the survey so this will help them to anticipate and respond to them during the real engagement.

Companies should allow for the stakeholders to allocate some time to participate and respond to the survey or questions. They should also be allowed some flexibilities in providing their answers and may extend some additional comments on any sustainability related matters they deem necessary. This is because occasionally, the survey would not cover all areas of sustainability that cater to all stakeholders.

 

6.       Analysis

Collecting the survey from stakeholders might be a long process. Some would not even revert with the response. That is why coordinators need to reach out to larger groups of participants to have better chance of having good sample size of the completed survey.

Once there is adequate sample size, it is time to carefully derive the responses. Results of the engagement could be drawn collectively as a whole as well as a more detail comparison of different stakeholder categories such as Employee vs Board of Directors, Suppliers vs Customers or even internal stakeholders vs external stakeholders, or could be further detail such as Suppliers by age, or region.

The important aspect is to gauge what are the most common topics and issues these stakeholders have and what do they expect in the future. This will help companies to see where they can meet the demands by stakeholders with the business readiness and capabilities, and ways to improve to achieve mutual gain.

The overall results could be presented in various ways and charts. The importing thing is to present it in a way that shows clear rankings of each matter. Factors and professional assumptions to reflect the rankings (based on the feedback from stakeholders) should further support the result when being presented.

 

7.       Respond

Once the result has been discussed and presented in companies’ websites or public reports, it does not mean that it is the end of the process. The true motivation for the engagement is so that companies have a better understanding of what needs to remain, change, improve on or even discard in their current services and practices to have a more sustainable operation.

It is a good opportunity to integrate the feedback from the engagement into business and sustainability strategies, policies and initiatives. At least there is a stronger basis of why changes are being made to ensure value creation for the company.

 

Conclusion

Materiality assessment can be time consuming and requires a lot of effort, resources and expertise. However, it also provide great insights for companies to improve in their business and sustainability management. At the same time, it will also create stronger ties between business and its stakeholders from the engagements conducted.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

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What are the Current Key Social Factors that Drive ESG Investments?

 

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Introduction

Investments in the spectrum of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) have drawn assets in an increasing projection each year. Even during the beginning of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, we had seen sustainable fund flows were resilient. In Quarter 1 2020, the sustainable fund had amounted to over USD 45 billion versus to outflow of over USD 380 billion for the global fund universe.

ESG funds saw loss in capitals during market selloff, just like many other non-ESG funds, however in comparison, ESG funds did not suffer loss as severe in the broader market where they had shown better performance on a relative basis.  

Similar with for index funds, we had seen over the majority of sustainable index funds ranging from developed and emerging market stocks had outperformed the comparable conventional index fund.

Similar outcomes were shown during Quarter 2 2020 where most sustainable funds outperformed conventional index funds covering the same market landscape.

 

Social Matters are on the Rise

One of the major issues due to the pandemic was it has caused and will continue to cause millions of people to be left unemployed. Apart from job security, the concerns on workplace matters have begun to be scrutinised further from the public and authorities. This includes issues on health and safety, work flexibilities and employee management.

The investors are also getting more serious on social issues. According to a survey on ESG, the interest on social issues had increased 20 percentage points since the start of COVID-19. To add, almost 80% of the survey respondents in the opinion that social considerations as contributing to positive impact on long-term investment performance as well as risk management.

Many corporate leaders nowadays are aware that more and more young investors have the preference to focus on ESG investing and the trend is also seen in female investors. Most financial institutions worldwide also observe this trend and have constantly notice the urgent need to equip the institutions with social sustainability emphasis as clients have started to ask questions on the matter.

 

Lack of Social Metrices

In comparison to the Environmental and Governance aspects, the Social aspect and the inadequacy of its metrices have not been given the same amount of attention. This resulted in the ineffectiveness for financial advisors to advise and guide clients to create portfolios to include a wide range of material social considerations.

Many reporting companies disclose a lot of its Environmental and Governance data, but Social data is still in the area where it requires more regulations in driving its more robust publications particularly for data that may affect the company’s reputation such as turnover rate.

Internally, there should be greater awareness of social issues that could potentially drive the initiatives to identify the relevant metrics to measure and report on, starting from the basic to a more complex sets of social data.

However, the unavailability of certain social data should not be the considered as the failure of a company to manage its social issues well. Some may already have sustainability-related mandates to support employees as well as having robust policies on labour rights, diversity and health and safety.

 

Conclusion

There is the current and ongoing trend of investors seeking long-term ESG investments, including from the Social aspect as these investors are driven by their own values while gaining long-term profit. However, more and more investors are demanding better avenue and data to attest the value creation from investments that consider Social material issues.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

 

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The Overview of How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Changing Supply Chain Management

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Introduction

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks poses threats to companies worldwide to drive globalization ambition to a more shared value and interconnected society and partnerships. This is not exclusive to certain companies or certain sectors, as what we are witnessing from the shocking effects from COVID-19 pandemic is that ESG risks are extensive across borders or even from the domestic landscape.

Impact on Trade and Investment

As vividly observed from lockdown measures across the world, local and global investment and trade are severely impacted and hurting most of companies supply chains and causes uncertainty of how the new norm and current measures taken are capable of ensuring supply chains are fluid as before the pandemic and could remain profitable – or even still operational.

Certainly this will contribute to the decline in global direct investment (FDI) in the following year, as well as decline in global mergers and acquisitions as these are linked to how resistant to which restrictive measures become binding and supply chains being relocated to home markets.

It is highly talked about these days that ESG risks are inter-related and so are the impacts. Thus, various professionals are advocating that the ways companies react to the COVID-19 pandemic impact shouldn’t be a ‘one-off’ approach as companies need to anticipate of other ESG risks such as climate change that will pose similar or greater impact.

The process of placing of restrictions and screening on investment and trade before the pandemic was justified based on the concerns of being solely dependent on a foreign company for supplies for goods and services and also the encouragement to local expertise and technology to be kept within the borders for security, surveillance or sabotage mitigation approaches.

This will soon be obsolete and will change fast. ESG risks will now add a different layer of filtering dimension to the beforementioned concerns that will change the global investment and trade flows. 

Companies Need to Transform

Normal ways of supply chain management are not deemed capable anymore to ensure robust business continuity.

Business models from companies are now changing. The global supply disruptions and restrictions have required companies to transform the very fundamentals to the value chain as a whole by remodeling business strategies and resilience capacity across operations. Companies now are diversifying their lines of production by also expanding the reach of secured and credible value chain across borders to ensure operational supplies are not interrupted.

Companies are also looking to implement structural changes by improving investment in technology and innovative solutions due to the demand of the present pandemic circumstances as well as a part to ensure business efficiency.

These are just gist of the transformation required but companies’ Boards and management need to realise that the value chain management transformation requires a more complex approach to ensure the change in supply chain management would be profitable and sustainable in the long term.

Focus on Domestic Suppliers

The supply disruptions due to COVID-19 cause companies to be looking inward towards suppliers within the border to secure readiness, availability and cost efficient (in some cases) supplies for operations. But how does this affect local businesses?

The government and regulators play the key role in the need to enhance and communicate the existing policies towards empowering local businesses to reach the capacity and capability to meet demands in the market, investment and trade.

Governments and regulators, and even private firms need to come together to re-strategise on approaches to ensure local business resilience through dynamic supply chain management. One of the ways this can be achieved is by investing and advocating in technological and innovative solutions. Certain sectors are less affected whilst dealing with the pandemic such as the energy sector that have certainly been paving ways for innovative thinking and solutions to mitigate the current pandemic crisis.

Local businesses also in need of support towards developing enhanced business models as well as diversification portfolios. This emphasis should extend to other sectors such as health and medical industries, technology as well as food producers.

The need to rethink on the critical goods and services for domestic production should be increased to meet market demands.

Focusing on market presence and reputation by local suppliers should be driven diligently. Their goods and services should be competitive and aligned with national and international standards to stand out as the suitable or better alternative to the market.

Conclusion

Companies need to transform to adapt and sustain in this new business environment that has majorly impacted the traditional global supply chain management. Securing sustainable supplies for operational business continuity should be one of the forefront agendas for companies in dealing with the new norm from COVID-19 pandemic, but also other unprecedented ESG risks in the future.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

 

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AI is all good for Environmental Sustainability? Think again.

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Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) have now known to poses both strategic advantages and risks. The investment on AI hardware and software is gaining traction and will continue to rise as more and more companies are undertaking AI-driven projects as means to move forward.

AI could either be a contributor to a company’s carbon footprint or even could be a tool the to mitigate a company’s carbon emissions.

Business leaders nowadays are becoming more stringent on their companies’ environmental issues and foresee the adoption of AI will help to address environmental issues impacting from its operations. However, information on the impact AI has on the environment, as well as the management approach by the companies’ Board and Management has not been adequately discussed.

 

Carbon Footprint of AI

AI systems and platforms are required to manage and process substantial deal of data, expanding the server capacities and are dependent on energy to cool data centres. This will directly cause the increase in energy consumption by a company.

Based on a research by the University of Massachusetts, it was found that training AI models to undertake Natural Language Processing (NLP), may project 500% carbon dioxide equivalent more of an American car lifetime emission.

Though that the finding is shocking, bear in mind that this is based on a study for one specific AI type and not that has been commonly adopted. Definitely, more studies on various AIs are needed for us to gauge the environmental impact of AI.

From this research, we can see the importance to extend our understanding on the carbon footprint of all AI categories. This would ensure we are able to set the responsible guidelines and standards to evaluate the environmental risks of AI before the investment made by companies to integrate AI-based system into AI-driven projects as a norm.

The Board and Management of a company need to be aware and take actions to include AI’s environmental impact to be included in the risk management processes as if failure to do so may lead to reputational or even financial impact to the company. The Board and Management should also eventually consider to AI’s environmental impacts to be part of the operational decision-making processes.

 

AI in Helping Companies to Mitigate Environmental Sustainability

Rather than focusing on high-capacity internal projects that aim to mitigate environmental footprint, companies may opt to engage with a data centre cloud provider for AI training and processing. A few technology companies have began taking these initiatives. An example is Google’s public cloud offering i.e. Google Cloud Platform. Google’s DeepMind division has developed self-thought AIs to lower energy consumption to cool its data centres. Overall, Google has managed to lower its data centre energy requirements by 35%. Another option is Microsoft via Microsoft Azure also runs high-capacity data centres. It’s also interesting to note that Microsoft has committed to be carbon negative by 2030.

Many are also aware that AI can elevate sustainability for various industries from agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and many more. Here is a list of how AI plays the net positive contributor to the environmental sustainability:

 

• In agriculture, AI can transform production by better monitoring and managing environmental conditions and crop yields. AI can help reduce both fertilizer and water, all while improving crop yields. Companies in this sector include Blue River Technology, Harvest CROO Robotics and Trace Genomics.
• In energy, AI can use deep predictive capabilities and intelligent grid systems to manage the demand and supply of renewable energy. By more accurately predicting weather patterns, AI can optimize efficiency, cutting costs, and unnecessary carbon pollution generation. Companies in this sector include Stem, ClimaCell and Foghorn Systems.
• In transportation, AI can help reduce traffic congestion, improve the transport of cargo (supply chain logistics), and enable more and more autonomous driving capability. AI will eventually help with the “last mile” delivery problem and reduce the need for delivery vehicles. AI can help businesses with demand forecasting, helping to reduce the amount of transport needed. Companies in this sector include Nutomony, Nauto and Sea Machines Robotics.
• In water resource management, AI can help reduce or eliminate waste while lowering costs and lessening environmental impact. AI-driven localized weather forecasting will help reduce water usage. Companies in this sector include Innovyze, Kurita Water Industries and Plutoshift.
• In manufacturing, AI can help reduce waste and energy use in production facilities. Robotics can enable better precision. AI can design more efficient systems. Companies in this sector include Drishti, Cognex Corp and Spark Cognition.
• In facilities management, AI can help recycle heat within buildings and maximize the efficiency of heating and cooling. AI can help optimize energy use in buildings by tracking the number of people in a room or predicting the availability of renewable energy sources. Companies in this sector include Aegis AI, IC Realtime and IBM’s Tririga.
• In materials science, AI can help researchers find new materials for solar panels, for turning heat back into useful electricity and to help find absorbent materials as components of CO2 scrubbers (taking CO2 out of the atmosphere). Companies in this sector include Citrine, Matsci AI and Ansys.

 

Conclusion

Though there are plenty of opportunities and evidences that AI adoption facilitate companies to improve its environmental sustainability, it is important for companies to be aware that AI has also the potential to produce significant carbon emissions, and also has the potential to offset or reduce those carbon emissions. Companies need to understand how this can affect the operations and financial performance. As companies are pressed to be more transparent in managing its sustainability issues, companies would also need to monitor and disclose on its strategy and performance related to AI and its impacts, thus questions on its effectiveness to mitigate carbon emissions as well as threats imposed on the environment, would also likely to be asked by the stakeholders.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

 

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Impacts of Climate Change on Sports

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Sustainability and sports. There are not many talks or disclosures to gauge the Sustainability (environmental issues in particular) impact on the sport sector. However, the influence of sports reaches out to a wide range of society across regions, age groups and genders, and provides a united social platform for more sustainable behaviours. Sports organisations are encouraged to be more progressive in becoming more sustainable to deepen connections with current and new fans while increasing business performance.

Environmental impacts should really be one of the focus areas for certain sports, such as outdoor winter sports and surfing. These sports are directly affected by climate change. Organisers will face the difficulties to host sporting events such as the Winter Olympics due to the decreased winter periods, and the changes in ocean tides and waves could force current surfing venues to be relocated.

Climate change may also resulted to increase in rainfall that could lead to flooding, and this has already affected cricket events in England and India. The increasing occurrence of intense wildfires that caused detrimental air quality had caused disruptions to the Australian Open in early 2020 and also caused cancellation of baseball games in Seattle. These are just some examples of how climate change are limiting the existing sporting events and the trend is likely to remain.

The business financial implications due to these cancellations are severe. For instance, the infamous Hurricane Harvey had forced the displacement of Houston sport business and clubs needed to participate in extended road games due to the fact that it was just not possible to host games especially for fans to crowd the stadiums.

Apart from that, the locations of the sporting facilities and stadiums are at risks of climate change, especially at coastal areas. The coastal areas are threatened by rising ocean sea levels and have high likelihood of facilities flooding with damaging effect.

Based on what has been mentioned so far, it is quite vivid to see how detrimental environmental i.e. climate change issues impose on sports, to both organisers, sport clubs and also the fans. 

Sports organisations’ environmental impact assessments tend to lack certain important aspects. Normally, sports organisations would only look at short impact on the facility or sporting event itself. They also need to focus on the externalities that poses direct environmental impacts that include carbon-producing transportation of teams and fans, food consumption and waste production.

It is also observed that sports organisations have not reached out enough to external stakeholders and experts on environmental initiatives. Like many other businesses, this is probably due to the lack of awareness and direction from the organisations’ management on the overall value from the initiatives.

It might be a surprise to some to know that fans are actually keen on and even participate in reducing sporting events’ and their own environmental footprints during a game. This is evident in environmental awareness campaigns that advocate fans to increase the use of mass transit, increase waste recovery and purchase carbon offsets to mitigate personal impacts when attending a sporting event.

Events surveys are helpful to formulate and assess the social and financial returns on investment of the said campaigns. The change of behavior to be more environmentally friendly does not only occur during a sporting event, but it leads to day to day behavior changes in sustainable living of individuals and local communities.

Sports organisers could also benefit financially from these initiatives and investments. Environmental initiatives are attractive for certain categories of fans such as the millennial.  They view these initiatives and investments to uplift their sports organisers’ brand perceptions and will drive towards lucrative returns in merchandise sales. The advocacy on environmental sustainability by organisers can be benefitted to promote a social norms of sustainable living that can lead to obtaining corporate sponsorships by other sustainable organisations.

Sport organisations should take the first approach of assessing their environmental impacts before begin to invest in initiatives to gain financial and social returns.

The Seattle Mariners had conducted its energy audits and facility upgrades. It was found that it has managed to save significant amount of energy and cost. Another example is the Ohio State University Athletics Department that extended its waste management programme of its facilities to the surrounding community to achieve zero waste. Some also extended their initiatives to the fans such as the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Sounders offset their teams’ carbon emission through carbon offsetting programmes including facility operations, team travel and fan travel.

Another energy cut saving initiatives is seen at Levi Stadium of San Francisco 49ers. The organisations are consuming renewable energy featuring solar panels. This is also seen at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam that features battery arrays that are capable in storing enough energy to meet the consumption of an entire event.

Another interesting example is from a football club in England. The Forrest Green Rovers had come up with a design to build a stadium that will be completely made out of sustainably sourced wood. The team’s current facilities are powered by 100% renewable energy. The facilities’ concessionaires only features plant-based food items. All of these efforts play a substantial role in minimizing its environmental impact.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation 

 

 

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