The Green Sports Alliance Takes Sustainability on the Road with ESPN’s College GameDay Built by The Home Depot
Erik DistlerSenior Resource Specialist | Green Sports AllianceIn September 2015, the Green Sports Alliance and ESPN launched an exciting collaboration focused on ensuring ESPN’s proprietary events maintain and evolve a legacy of environmental stewardship. First up was tackling sustainability at the ever-popular, weekly college football tradition, College GameDay.
Over the course of the past season, bright and early on the show’s college campus set, along with passionate college football fans and students, sustainability was in action. The Green Sports Alliance traveled with College GameDay throughout the season to help ensure commitments around minimizing the show’s environmental impact were met, and to educate and inspire action through engaging university students, faculty and staff, as well as fans.Key aspects of this work included: organizing a waste management program focused on landfill diversion through compost and recycling streams; meeting with university leaders and touring campus sustainability highlights to collect best practices and case examples from the season; enlisting student volunteers and sustainability groups to assist in waste diversion; and educating students and fans on broad sports sustainability efforts, and of course specifically at ESPN.The Green Sports Alliance conducted this work by leaning on its experience, expertise and network within the sports industry, which extends through members from more than 330 sports teams and venues from 20 different sports leagues and 14 countries. The collaboration with ESPN also aligns with the organization’s mission and purpose focused on inspiring the sports industry and its stakeholders to embrace sustainability practices by leveraging the cultural and market influence of sports.College GameDay has a cemented legacy on Saturday mornings in the fall. The Green Sports Alliance was proud to collaborate with ESPN to attach to this legacy sustainability where, regardless of the game’s final score, everyone wins!