A Message from our Chairman: Celebrating a Successful Year in Green Sports

Greetings,As 2013 comes to a close, we wanted to take some time to reflect on the accomplishments of the Alliance, our members and the green sports movement.We’ve enjoyed exponential membership growth, held a highly successful Summit in New York City and received tremendous media coverage throughout the year. All of this has continued to accelerate the growth of the movement.This is all thanks to you, our members, partners, sponsors and fans. Your commitment to the green sports movement is not only driving change in the industry, but it is also the force behind our growing influence beyond game days.

‍A Brief Recap of the Year:

MEMBERSHIP

‍Alliance membership jumped from 160 to 215 teams, venues and leagues in 2013 alone. Members such as the Atlanta Falcons, Golden State Warriors, New York Giants, Penn State, Portland Thorns and Stanford have come on board in the past year. Click here to see the complete list of Alliance members.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

‍The Green Sports Alliance Board of Directors welcomed three new board members in 2013 – bringing the lineup to 13 thought leaders in sports and sustainability. With robust backgrounds in the technical aspects of facility environmental initiatives and an industry level viewpoint on the trends, our newest board members expand the Alliance's internal expertise and the industry-wide reach of the organization.

‍PROGRAMS

‍Over the past year, we have hosted 12 webinars with topics including implementing and optimizing composting programs, the business case for addressing climate change and communicating greening efforts to the public. We released the Green Sports Alliance E-Waste Collection Playbook: A guide to help sports teams and venues host a successful e-waste collection drive. And, with the help of our partners, we bolstered our resource library to better serve our members and the industry.

‍OUTREACH

‍Alliance members, Board and staff contributed to content at many 2013 industry conferences, including: AASHE, Beyond Sport, Collegiate Athletics Facilities Summit, Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit, Greenbuild and the SMA Annual Seminar.

‍SUMMIT

‍We welcomed over 600 people to the heart of the sports industry, New York City, for an informative, inspirational and unparalleled gathering. The 2013 Summit was our greatest event to date – influential in both size and scope. Led through the voices of 96 speakers, the program included four workshops, eight roundtable sessions, two keynote addresses and seven plenary panels. We toured four iconic New York area sports venues. We honored Christina Weiss Lurie, an Owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, with the 2013 Green Sports Alliance Environmental Leadership Award at the Green Sports Gala, overlooking the Statue of Liberty and iconic NYC skyline. On the final day of the Summit, over 80 women leaders from the sports industry gathered for the first-ever Women, Sports and the Environment Symposium co-hosted by the U.S. EPA.We are already working on the 2014 Summit July 21-23 in Santa Clara, CA, and hope you all plan to join us.Throughout the year, the green sports movement received unprecedented coverage across a variety of outlets. There were features on Bloomberg TV's Sportfolio, GreenBiz.com, Forbes, The New York Times, Solutions Journal, SportsBusiness Journal and the Washington Post, to name only a few.

Several new valuable resources were created and released, including the 2013 NRDC Collegiate Game Changers report and the U.S. EPA Green Sports website. The movement even got play on Capitol Hill during a closed-session meeting of the Congressional Bicameral Committee on Climate Change, where four professional leagues came together to address environmental challenges faced by the sports industry.There is incredible progress to celebrate this year. And, looking toward 2014, we will keep pushing the conversation forward – identifying how sports teams, venues, leagues and events can embrace sustainability to improve their bottom line and create a lasting legacy in their respective communities and beyond.We encourage you all to keep up the good work, support each other and let us know how we can continue to enhance your efforts. We look forward to all that we will accomplish together in 2014. Happy Holidays, Scott Jenkins Chairman, Green Sports Alliance Vice President of Ballpark Operations, Seattle Mariners