Big sports events lead the way to greener future
Golf, racing and tennis are all doing their bit in the rush to be sustainable, says Marcus Armytage
If I was in charge of “comms” at a major sports event or stadium I could not wait to tell you in a press release about my “sustainability journey” and give you, in percentage terms, where we are at. The Kia Oval, for example, is 90 per cent of the way to reaching full sustainability by 2020.
Alas, the only “comms” I am in charge of is the Armytages. We are an average family and, without being evangelical about it, my guess is that if we are doing things to reduce our waste, cut down on plastic and pollution, then so are a lot of people.
Our biggest use of plastic was for milk so, recently, we switched back to having it
delivered in bottles. I had forgotten (crying emoji) how sweet it was to be woken at 4.30 on a summer morning, not by the dawn chorus but by green tops rattling in a crate.
My “bag for life” is an old poultry corn sack which gets a few looks when I leave the local supermarket. The shaft of my razor is bamboo although, I know, a potential trade-off is a hungry panda on a mountain in upland China. (Beard, I am afraid, is not an option).
Instead of plastic shampoo containers we now use an organic shampoo bar.
Ironically, bought online, these were delivered wrapped in more plastic protection and padding than a “ripe and ready” avocado from Waitrose or an Australian batsman going out to face Jofra Archer.
We go on a “staycation” with the ponies but en route west my ancient diesel horsebox probably emits the equivalent in pollution to a transatlantic flight in a modern jumbo. I would like an electric car but cannot afford one.
So we are not perfect and I admit there is a huge dollop of hypocrisy and conscience carbon trading going on.
But we are trying. A little like the tennis players, who circle the globe several times a year to play in tournaments, demanding the plastic be removed from their restringed rackets, saving the equivalent of 4,500 plastic bags at Wimbledon, or Tommy Fleetwood being praised for leaving the private jet on the tarmac to get to Northern Ireland on a commercial flight, every little helps.
If I take instruction from any Old Etonian now, then until Boris gets his feet under the table in No 10, it is from Hugh Fearnley-whittingstall, thorn in the sides of the great supermarket behemoths with his war on plastic.
But Hugh has less to worry about when it comes to Britain’s great sporting occasions or, indeed, institutions with, perhaps, the exception of cycling team sponsor Ineos, who make a lot of it.
Where the supermarkets drag their feet – how difficult can it be to put strawberries in a cardboard punnet? – the eco one-upmanship between the nation’s big sporting events means that, in many respects, sport is at the forefront of our greener future.
Certainly if you can find a plastic straw, cocktail mixer or single-use “glass” at Royal Ascot or Lord’s now it is a collector’s item.
“Sustainability director” is an actual job at some of these places now. Even the Jockey Club has a sustainability manager and it shares its experiences through an august organisation called the British Association for Sustainable Sport.
Royal Portrush claimed the greenest Open (presumably since plastic was invented) and you can bet Royal St George’s will want to better it next year. Royal Ascot set a target of washing 500,000 plastic “100-use glasses” over five days in June and, no matter that they had to be taken by lorry to Tilbury to be cleaned, the actual number of glasses put into special bins by racegoers was 638,702.
This backs up the view of Jon Surtees at the Oval, a leader in the field of selling water in cans, a deposit system of returning glasses and ensuring it is powered by green electricity.
He says the rush to be sustainable is fan-driven rather than the initiative of the stadiums themselves. There was a lag time because the supply chain was not ready for it but now there is a lot of competition in that sector.
What we demand of ourselves, we can reasonably expect of our great sporting festivals. And supermarkets. But that, it seems, is a different story.
How sweet it is to be woken at 4.30 by green tops rattling in a crate