Paddle UK reposted this
Last year, two National Lottery funded events piloted using an online platform to measure the environmental footprint of their event. To ensure that the pilot with IslaTRACE replicated as many event types as possible, we worked with the Para Swimming World Championships in Manchester and Canoe Slalom World Championships at Lee Valley to cover Paralympic and Olympic sport, indoor and outdoor venues, plus city centre and regional locations. Colleagues from the events reflect on their experiences and share their tips for measuring environmental footprints at sporting events. Richard Stacey-Chapman, Events and Competition Manager at Paddle UK has these top tips as any events team looks to measure their footprint: 🌊 When building your events staffing structure, ensure someone has the responsibility for sustainability and data collection to avoid key data being missed 🌊 Make the time to understand the data collection requirements so that you can build them into wider team plans 🌊 As many of our events work with multiple organisations, you will also need to engage your stakeholders as early as possible and share your requirements with them so they are able to collect the required data as they progress Katie Chapman, Event Director for the World Para Swimming Championships also shares her advice: 🌿 Use your event project plan and budget to create a sustainability action plan including steps you can take to reduce environmental impact and what data you will need to collect across all areas of the event planning. Prioritise the high impact areas initially based on volume or budget. 🌿 Include sustainability and carbon footprint measurement KPI’s in tenders to ensure your suppliers understand what is required from the start. If your suppliers are already on board, then have the conversation about what retrospective actions can be taken. 🌿 Set up a sustainability working group to include experts from the local authority and venue to ensure sustainability measures are championed and to gain support with data collection, much of which will come from the venue, i.e energy and waste. Environmental sustainability is an important part of our new Major Events strategic framework, Making Live Sport Matter (https://bit.ly/3QsshPM). Over the next year, our team wants to work with the sector to: 👉 Continue to measure the environmental footprint of major events. We are interested to hear from measurement platforms and providers for phase 2 of this work. 👉 Provide sustainability training through our knowledge transfer programme. 👉 Collectively explore ways to work differently and carry out pilot projects to reduce the carbon emissions on processes and items that all events use. Follow the link to read more about UK Sport's Environmental Sustainability strategy and the Team of Tomorrow, and the progress made in the year since the launch ➡ https://bit.ly/441t3cj
Keep up the good work!
Founder & Event Sustainability Director | Power 50 Green Champion | Event Academy Advisor & Lecturer
4moWorking with the UK Sport team on this project was an absolute pleasure! It provided invaluable insights into the carbon and waste impact of events of this scale and identify key areas of improvement for the future. A successful pilot!