Run On Less: Truckers Test Fuel Efficiency in Long Haul Treks Across US and Canada

In the four year-plus existence of GreenSportsBlog, we’ve reported on a wide variety of sports, from surfing to auto racing, from cricket to disk sports. Well, today we take a bit of poetic license as we take a look at long haul trucking. The first ever Run on Less (ROL) fuel-economy roadshow kicked of on September 6 and extends until September 26-28. ROL is not a race — thus, the poetic license — but it puts seasoned drivers and trucks to the test as they haul freight over three weeks from various starting points in the US and Canada to Atlanta in trucks equipped with a variety of technologies that improve fuel efficiency.

 

The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) and nonprofit Carbon War Room, founded by Sir Richard Branson, are the driving forces behind Run on Less (ROL), the first-of-its-kind fuel-economy roadshow that kicked off September 6. Seven seasoned drivers, working for PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division as well as companies that are well-known in the trucking industry^, were selected to haul freight in trucks equipped with a variety of technologies that improve fuel efficiency from a variety of starting points to Atlanta.

When I first read about Run On Less, I thought to myself, “This is a cool and important story but it’s not technically a sport since the drivers aren’t racing. I understand why — minimizing crashes with trucks full of freight is a laudable idea —and it’s impossible, since they’re starting from different points across the US and Canada, to equalize for truck makes, loads, terrains, winds and more. Thus the goal isn’t to get to Atlanta first.” But I still thought it would be an interesting story for you, the readers, so I decided to call Mike Roeth, Executive Director of NACFE, to see if there was a sports hook, a sports analogy, to which I could latch on.

 

Roeth Mike NACFE

Mike Roeth, Executive Director of NACFE (Photo credit: NACFE)

 

Mike found one: NBA All Star Weekend.

“Look at ‘Run on Less’ as if it’s a skills competition like the NBA Slam Dunk or Three Point Shooting Contest of trucking,” recommended Mr. Roeth. “We designed it to showcase efficient and effective driving skills, rather than go for a championship of some kind.”

Works for me!

So here’s the gist:

The seven trucks (two Volvos, two Internationals and 3 Cascadias), all less than three years old, are outfitted with a wide array of advanced fuel efficiency technologies. As no two trucks are the same, each fleet selects its own combination of technologies to achieve its fuel-efficiency goals. According to Mr. Roeth, “The trucks have different aerodynamics technologies: Some feature low rolling resistance tires, others have automatic tire inflation. There will be a variety of state-of-the-art power trains and automated manual transmissions. Several of the trucks are equipped with 15-liter engines, and others are going smaller, with a 13-liter and an 11-liter engine among the group. Three of the trucks have solar panels to generate power while the drivers are sleeping.”

 

Truck with Solar US Xpress

Truck cab with solar panels on the roof. Three of the trucks in Run On Less have on board solar. (Photo credit: USXpress)

 

The trucks will, when it’s all said and done, have driven a combined 40,000 miles over roughly two and a half weeks. The routes and the types of driving will vary greatly: One fleet is delivering auto parts from El Paso, Texas, to Ellisville, Missouri. Another is making dedicated store deliveries in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. Yet another is running a route from Laredo, Texas, to the Carolinas. And another is doing daily round-trips from Perry, Georgia, to Charleston, South Carolina.

Weather has played a major role in Run On Less. “Hurricanes Harvey and Irma had a significant effect,” said Roeth, at a New York City press conference on Tuesday, heralding Run On Less. “Routes had to change, fuel availability became an issue and winds at times hindered and at other times helped the drivers.”

No matter the route and the load, data is being collected on board in real time, courtesy of GPS technology partner Geotab, and is being updated 6-8 times per day on the Run On Less website.  “We track dollars, gallons and CO₂ emissions saved,” reported Mr. Roeth. “Every gallon of diesel not burned saves 22 lbs. of CO₂. Over the first 10 days of the run, the drivers averaged 10.1 miles per gallon (mpg), economy that’s 57 percent better than the national average of 6.4 mpg for trucks in this size range#. Perhaps the greatest thing is that the technologies being used are order-able right now, available to anyone.”

According to NACFE, if the 1.7 million trucks on the road in the US and Canada today achieved the same level of efficiency as the trucks in Run On Less, there would be annual cumulative savings of 98 million tons of CO₂ and $48 billion. The market opportunity for efficient technologies in trucking is massive because, per Mr. Roeth, only “about 100,000 trucks are outfitted with the advanced efficiency technologies.”

That said, the trucking industry has come a long way on environmental issue over the last three decades or so. “Going back to 1990, the EPA put environmental restrictions on NOx — a generic term for the nitrogen oxides that are most relevant for air pollution, namely nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) — so trucks would run cleaner,” offered Mr. Roeth. “The industry didn’t like it because it cost more and resulted, counterintuitively, in slightly lower miles per gallon performance. Fast forward to the present. Now with efficiency being the main the goal of most EPA regulations, the industry has gotten behind them. You can understand why when fuel costs nowadays run to $40,000 per year. And when gas is $4 a gallon, those annual fuel costs can spike to upwards of $70,000.”

On climate change, Mr. Roeth asserts that the industry and their large customers “get it — for the most part. This is true especially for companies like Pepsi, Amazon and Wal-Mart, for which sustainability is a big deal. On the other hand, some in the industry prefer to stay away from climate change and stick with energy efficiency. Drivers of course like the increased fuel economy — in addition to the obvious reasons of saving money and cleaner air, one driver told me ‘I like it because it means I have to stop less frequently’.”

As for electrification of the long haul trucking fleet, Mr. Roeth sees the industry moving slowly — or maybe not: “It will take awhile to get to scale on electrification for trucks — it will happen more quickly with passenger cars. Right now, it simply is easier to add size to a gas tank to give a truck more range than it is to get similar range with batteries. But I may be proven wrong as battery technology is improving — and the costs are decreasing — exponentially. I’ll be happy if that’s the case.”

Finally, at Tuesday’s presser, it fell to Sir Richard Branson to bring home the power of Run On Less in a very personal way: “After spending the last week or so in the British Virgin Islands, which got absolutely leveled by Hurricane Irma — in the immediate aftermath it looked like an atom bomb had hit — it’s strange to be here talking about trucking…But, actually, Run On Less offers a ray of hope as it is showing the amount of carbon that can be saved by the industry [if it simply adopts already available technologies] is gigantic.”

 

Branson

Sir Richard Branson (l) at the NACFE press conference (Photo credit: Lewis Blaustein)

 

^ Albert Transport, Hirschbach, Mesilla Valley Transportation, Nussbaum Transportation, Ploger Transportation, and US Xpress are the other trucking companies taking part
# Trucks get far lower fuel economy than even SUVs, much less sedans or subcompact cars. This should not be surprising as these are extremely heavy vehicles carrying staggeringly heavy loads.

 

 

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GSB Eco-Scoreboard: Catching Up with Green-Sports Leaders on the Field

For the past four years, GreenSportsBlog has featured the teams, athletes and events that are taking the Green-Sports lead. What we haven’t focused on much is how said teams and players have done on the court or field. Well, that changes today as we unveil a new occasional feature, the GSB Eco-Scoreboard: Catching Up with Green-Sports Leaders on the Field, in which we highlight the recent on-field/court results of the greenest teams and athletes. Why? Because if they do well, their green messages will gain a wider audience. Also, it’s fun. And if there’s one thing the climate change/environmental world can use more of — including the Green-Sports niche — is fun.

 

Dartford F.C.

Dartford Football Club in Kent, located 18 miles southeast of London has always resided in the lower rungs of the English football (soccer) pyramid and is currently in the sixth tier.

Yet this classic “small club” has gone big when it comes to sustainability. Its 11 year-old Princes Park was built with sustainable construction materials, boasts on-site solar panels, an advanced rainwater reclamation system and a green roof.

 

Princes Park Green Roof

Princes Park, home of Dartford F.C., and its green roof (Photo credit: Dartford F.C.)

 

On the pitch, Dartford F.C. has one major goal this season: Earn promotion to the fifth tier National League by finishing first in the National League South. After its high octane 4-2 home win on Tuesday over Eastbourne Borough, Dartford moved into a 4-way tie for first place. There’s a long way to go — Dartford just played the 11th game of its 42-game season — but the early signs are strong.

Next up for “The Darts” is a Saturday visit to 17th place Weston-super-Mare A.F.C. (I love these British team names).

 

Forest Green Rovers

Sticking with the minor leagues of English football, we turn to Forest Green Rovers.

Its owner, Dale Vince, OBE, who also owns solar and wind company Ecotricity, has set out to turn the West Midlands club into the Greenest Team in Sports. From solar panels on the roof to an organic pitch that is mowed by a solar powered mow-bot to exclusively-vegan concession stands, Vince and FGR has succeeded in setting the Green-Sports pace.

Vince realizes that the FGR Green Story will get more attention and followers the better the team does on the pitch.

On that score, the team made a significant leap when it earned promotion in May from the fifth tier National League to fourth tier League Two for the first time in its 125 year history.

Now the trick is to stay in League Two this season — to do so, FGR cannot finish in the bottom two places or it will be relegated back down from whence they came. And it won’t be easy as stepping up a league means a significant step up in competition.

FGR has had a scratchy start to the 2017-2018 season, earning but one win and one tie from their first seven contests. Thus Saturday’s match at Port Vale was key as a loss would mean FGR would be in the dreaded “relegation zone,” a place you don’t want to be, even this early in the season (eight matches have been played in the 46-game schedule).

And things looked dicey when Port Vale took the lead in the 20th minute. But, in the 66th minute, Omar Bugiel entered the game for FGR as a substitute and two minutes later, the the Lebanese National Team member leveled things with a glancing header. From then on, FGR applied constant pressure but could not net the game winner. Still, a tie on the road was a solid result and keeps FGR out of the relegation zone for now.

 

Omar Bugiel FGR

Lebanese international Omar Bugiel scored the equalizer for Forest Green Rovers in their 1-1 draw at Port Vale on Saturday (Photo credit: Forest Green Rovers)

 

Friday night, Forest Green Rovers’ fight to stay above danger continues when 10th place Swindon Town F.C. comes to The New Lawn.

 

Stephen Piscotty, St. Louis Cardinals

GreenSportsBlog has closely followed the 25 year old Redbirds outfielder after interviewing him in January. Why did we talk to Piscotty? Two reasons:

  1. Coming off of a stellar first full season in the big leagues, with 25 homers and 85 RBIs, Piscotty was primed for a breakout 2017 campaign.
  2. A 2015 Stanford graduate, with a degree in Atmosphere and Energy Engineering, Piscotty is the rare athlete to express serious knowledge of and interest in clean tech—specifically solar and smart grid.

 

Manager of Photography

Stephen Piscotty, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder (Photo credit: Taka Yanagimoto/St. Louis Cardinals)

 

Unfortunately, Piscotty has had a very rough second season:  Two stints on the disabled list with hamstring and groin injuries combined with a sophomore slump at the plate led to a demotion to Triple-A Memphis in early August.

But these struggles pale in comparison to the news Piscotty received over Memorial Day that his mother, Gretchen, had been diagnosed with ALS^ or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

As the July 31st trade deadline approached, rumors surfaced that the Cardinals were trying to deal Piscotty to the Oakland A’s to allow him to be nearer to his mom and family in the Bay Area. That trade did not come to pass.

In fact, Piscotty was sent back up to St. Louis from Memphis after only a couple weeks. Shortly thereafter, he launched a game-winning homer against the Padres on September 6 in San Diego, with his mom in the stands. This gave a much-needed boost to the Cardinals in their long shot bid to make the playoffs — as of this writing, the Redbirds are 4.5 games out of a wild card berth with 13 games to go.

 

^ If you are interested in donating to support ALS research, please click here for a link to the ALS Association

 

 

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Lonely Whale Foundation and Adrian Grenier Partner with Mariners, Sounders and Seahawks on “Strawless in Seattle” September

The Lonely Whale Foundation, co-founded by Adrian Grenier of HBO’s Entourage fame, is working with Seattle’s pro sports teams (Major League Baseball’s Mariners, the NFL’s Seahawks and the Sounders of Major League Soccer) to get fans to keep plastic out of the oceans by dramatically reducing their plastic straw usage. 

 

ADRIAN GRENIER PITCHES STRAWLESS IN SEATTLE PROGRAM

When Adrian Grenier took the mound at Seattle’s Safeco Field on September 1st, he wasn’t an out-of-left-field starting pitching choice for the American League wild card contending Mariners. No, the star of HBO’s Entourage threw out the first pitch for a different team — The Lonely Whale Foundation, the nonprofit he co-founded in 2015 with film producer Lucy Sumner — to help kickoff (sorry for the mixed sports metaphor there) Strawless in Seattle September, a new phase of their “#StopSucking” campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

StrawlessInSeattle-FullLogo_ (002)

 

“We are living during a critical turning point for our ocean, and that’s why I’m excited to celebrate the city of Seattle as a true ocean health leader,” said Grenier. “Alongside Lonely Whale Foundation, Seattle’s citywide commitment demonstrates our collective strength to create measurable impact and address the global ocean plastic pollution crisis. We are starting in Seattle with the plastic straw and see no limits if we combine forces to solve this global issue.”

CenturyLink Field is taking the Strawless in Seattle September baton from Safeco Field and the Mariners. The home of Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders and the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL has already switched to 100 percent paper straws — and they are only given out by request. During all September home games, those straws, made by Aardvark Straws, display the Strawless Ocean brand. The Sounders gave out those straws at their game vs. the LA Galaxy this past Sunday and will do so again when the Vancouver Whitecaps come to town on the 27th. The NFL’s Seahawks will go with the Strawless Ocean branding at their lone September home game — this Sunday’s home opener vs. the San Francisco 49ers. From the beginning of October through the end of the 2017 season and beyond, all straws at Seahawks home games, also made by Aardvark, will display the team’s logo.

 

Ocean + Strawless Straws

“Strawless Ocean”-branded paper straws are being given out all September long at Seattle Seahawks and Sounders home games at CenturyLink Field as well as at all Mariners September home contests at Safeco Field (Photo credit: Aardvark Straws)

 

Strawless in Seattle represents Phase III of Lonely Whale’s #StopSucking campaign. The idea, according to Dune Ives, the nonprofit’s executive director, “is to focus on one city, Seattle, where there already is a strong ‘healthy living’ ethos, to drive a comprehensive, monthlong campaign.” Sports is a key venue for the campaign; entertainment,  bars, and restaurants are three others.

 

Dune Ives_Executive director of Lonely Whale Foundation

Dune Ives, executive director of Lonely Whale Foundation (Photo credit: Lonely Whale Foundation)

 

Adrian Grenier challenged Russell Wilson, the Seahawks Pro Bowl quarterback, to get involved with Strawless in Seattle and #StopSucking. Wilson accepted and then challenged Seahawks fans (aka “the 12s” — for “12th man”) to do the same.

 

 

This builds upon a fun, #StopSucking-themed, celebrity-laden public service announcement (PSA) campaign, also from Lonely Whale Foundation. And ‘Hawks fans will also get into the “talk the strawless talk” act when they visit the #StopSucking photo booth at CenturyLink. I am sure there will be some, shall we say, colorful fan entries, depending on how the games are going.

 

#StopSucking PSA from the Lonely Whale Foundation is running as part of Strawless in Seattle campaign.

 

Phase I of the campaign focused on spreading the #StopSucking videos virally. “Sucker Punch,” an earlier humorous video under the #StopSucking umbrella, premiered at February’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, TX. “The ‘super slow motion’ visuals of celebrities from Neil DeGrasse Tyson to Sports Illustrated swimsuit models having their straws slapped out of their mouths by the tail of an ocean creature got a great response at South By Southwest and beyond,” said Ms. Ives.

 

The 1-minute long “Sucker Punch” video from The Lonely Whale Foundation, which premiered at SXSW this February.

 

The #StopSucking social media campaign, which constitutes Phase II, is, per Ms. Ives, “going gangbusters.”

It will take much more than the powerful, multi-phase #StopSucking campaign to make a significant dent in the massive, global plastic ocean waste problem. How significant? Americans use 500 million plastic straws every day.

You read that right: we use 500 million plastic straws every day. Right now there are “only” 327 million American humans.

Many of these plastic straws end up in the oceans, polluting the water and harming sea life. If we continue on our current path, plastics in the oceans, of which straws are a small but significant part, will outweigh all fish by 2050.

This is why there are many straw reduction, strawless, and switch-from-plastic-straw efforts. GreenSportsBlog featured one earlier this year, the powerful OneLessStraw campaign from the high school students/sister and brother tandem, Olivia and Carter Ries, co-founders of nonprofit OneMoreGeneration (OMG!)

Ms. Ives welcomes the company: “We have 50 NGO partners globally, all of whom do great, important work. We believe Lonely Whale fills in a key missing element: A powerful umbrella platform, which includes the right social media engagement tools, the right venues and the right celebrities to catalyze and grow the movement.”

As noted earlier, restaurants and bars are key venues for #StopSucking, but sports will always have a primary role. “It is inspiring to see our stadiums and teams taking a leadership position with the Strawless Ocean challenge,” enthused Ms. Ives. “Very few outlets exist that reach and influence so many individuals at one time and through their commitment, our teams are taking steps to significantly reduce their use of single-use plastics by starting first with the straw.”

And Seattle-based teams and athletes are not the only sports figures to join in. Grenier challenged Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson to join the campaign in August and Karlsson accepted. Maybe Lonely Whale should look north of the border for their next campaign.

After all, “Strawless with the (Ottawa) Sens” has a nice ring to it.

 

 

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Oregon State Student Athletes Represent Best of Green-Sports with BAST Program

Cadres of green-minded students and the growing popularity of sustainability as an academic discipline are just two reasons why there is a growing intersection of Green & Sports on campuses across the country. But while athletics and sustainability departments have driven the green-sports bus, student-athletes have taken a back seat to this point. At least, that is, until Oregon State University’s Samantha (“Sam”) Lewis, a cross-country/track runner, and Jesikah Cavanaugh, a swimmer, decided they, along with three other student-athletes wanted to accelerate the greening of OSU sports. GreenSportsBlog talked recently with Sam and Jesikah to get their takes on how they came to take on leading roles in the birth of the Beaver Athlete Sustainability Team (BAST), what it has accomplished so far and where they think it will go from here.

 

If you wanted to draw up two characters to be green-sports student athlete pioneers, you would have conjured Sam Lewis and Jesikah Cavanaugh. They helped create the Beaver Athlete Sustainability Team or BAST at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Both are life-long environmentalists.

Sam, a runner who grew up in Boulder, CO, told GreenSportsBlog that “sustainability was embedded in my life from an early age. We composted, recycled, rode bikes and snowshoed.” Oregon State was a natural choice due to her “love of the outdoors and of running in the rain.” I get her first love but running in the rain? Not so much.

 

Sam Lewis

Sam Lewis, Oregon State Class of ’17, founding member of BAST, and member of the cross-country/track team  (Photo credit: Oregon State University Athletics)

 

Jesikah’s lifelong appreciation of the environment was nurtured in Anchorage, AK, where, she reports, “everything is clean.” A swimmer by the age of four, Jess says she was inspired by her older, faster sister Meghan. Recruited by Division III schools in Colorado and Pittsburgh, PA, Jesikah applied to OSU almost as an afterthought: “My dad went to Oregon State and I didn’t want to go there. But I was interested in environmental engineering and I liked that their program was tied to chemical engineering rather than civil, as was the case at most schools. I ultimately want to work on water remediation—cleaning and restoration—so that link with chemical engineering was a key reason I ended up in Corvallis.”

 

Jesikah Cavanaugh OSU BAST

Jesikah Cavanaugh, Oregon State Class of ’17, founding member of BAST, and member of the swim team  (Photo credit: Oregon State Athletics)

 

Both overcame serious obstacles in their sports.

Sam, who ran the 6K in cross-country, “suffered lots of injuries,” including a stress fracture in her back during her sophomore year. “It was so frustrating. I was recruited to be a Division I runner at a Pac-12 school and I couldn’t even walk my dog,” shared Sam, “It took a couple of years to be able to compete again, but the work it took to come back was so worth it—it was the best feeling ever.” And the women’s cross-country and track team has faced its own challenges. “The sport was dropped at Oregon State in 1988, rebooted in 2004, so we have been playing catch up against some of the best teams in the country,” explained Sam. But, reflecting her grit, the cross-country squad was able to finish a respectable 12th in the powerful, 35-team West region last year, an improvement of seven places from 2015.

Jes was not offered a swimming scholarship. No problem. She walked on to the Oregon State swim team as a freshman, swimming the 100- and 200-meter butterfly. Her consistent performances (“I never missed a meet!”) earned her a scholarship by her junior year.

With passion for the environment and grit, all that was needed for Sam and Jes to enter the green-sports fray was a cause.

 

The cause turned out to be recycling bins.

You see, Sam was the women’s cross country/track team’s representative on something called the OSU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), which exists to make the student-athlete experience the best in can possibly be. Per Sam, “It’s not like there was talk of sustainability or climate change at SAAC. I simply asked about getting recycling bins in our locker room. Runners drink tons of chocolate milk so there were empty bottles all over the place and no bins in which to put them. I couldn’t believe that so I had to say something. THAT got discussion going — folks from other sports spoke up about recycling and other environmental issues.”

Associate Athletic Director Kimya Massey saw there was a group of sustainability-minded student-athletes in SAAC, introduced Sam to Jesikah, and suggested they form a green-themed subgroup. He believed a student run group would be unique, gain immediate credibility and could garner broad student and fan interest.

And so in the spring of 2016, the Beaver Athlete Sustainability Team or BAST was born with Sam, Jesikah and 6-8 other student-athletes forming the rest of the initial team. Jesikah said the initial support provided by the Athletic Department was crucial: “They were great from the beginning, allowing us the freedom to create our own initiatives and the opportunity to create change.”

Also per Jesikah, the spring 2016 semester saw the nascent BAST group act in a deliberate, strategic and determined fashion, to “define our three organizing pillars.”

 

Those pillars are as powerful as they are simple.

  1. Encourage and implement sustainable ideas within the athletic department
  2. Educate our fellow student-athletes about sustainability and environmental issues
  3. Work to engage with the rest of campus and the broader Corvallis community

With the pillars in place, Sam, Jesikah and the team knew they had to pivot from planning into action and events.

They staffed an Earth Day booth to let the campus know BAST existed and to learn the community’s view of athletics’ waste and its impacts on the environment. But the group’s big launch took place last fall at Reser Stadium, the home of Oregon State football.

“Tons of ‘stuff’ is given away for free at football games as promotional items,” offered Sam. “Things like pom-poms. Most people use them once; they get thrown out and go right to the landfill. We worked with the marketing team at the athletic department — we brought them in early on and they’ve been super supportive — to run a tabling effort at the Cal (Berkeley) game at which fans would return their pom-poms. Of the 750 pom-poms that were given out, about 500 were collected by BAST members. They were used again at one of Jes’ swim meets this spring.” At the Arizona game, BAST was able to collect about half of the LED light sticks that were given out. Fan engagement was the main goal at one OSU men’s basketball game and one women’s contest as BAST members manned a recycling-education table on the main concourse of Gill Coliseum.

 

OSU Pom Poms

Sam Lewis (l), Jesikah Cavanaugh (front) and the BAST team managed the “Return Pom Pom” effort at select Oregon State home football games in 2016. (Photo credit: OSU Campus Recycling)

 

But it may have been OSU baseball where BAST made its biggest first year impact. Per Sam, “The athletic department provided several clear recycling bins to Goss Stadium and BAST staffed the games to maximize the number of fans who recycled. The clear bins made it easy for fans to see what and how much was going in. This helped increase the amount recycled at the ‘clear bin’ games by a significant amount.”

 

OSU Baseball Recycling

Jesikah Cavanaugh (r), along with teammate Alice Ochs and assistant swim coach Michael Wong collect the clear recycling receptacles from an Oregon State home baseball game (Photo credit: Oregon State Athletics)

 

BAST was honored for its efforts when the Green Sports Alliance recognized the group as its Innovator of the Year at its June summit in Sacramento.

Sam and Jesikah were a bit lonely at the summit, as well as at the first Pac-12 Sustainability Conference, as they were the only student-athletes to attend. “Athletic directors, facilities managers and sustainability departments are all very into it,” noted Sam. “We showed that student-athletes can drive action and interest in sustainability. Hopefully, more groups like BAST will take off at other schools.”

 

Sam Bill Walton jesikah

Sam Lewis (l), Bill Walton, member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and Jesikah Cavanaugh at the first Pac-12 Sustainability Conference in June. (Photo credit: Sam Lewis)

 

BAST will have to grow without Sam’s and Jesikah’s day-to-day leadership as both graduated in May; Sam with an Exercise and Sports Science (aka Kinesiology) degree and Jesikah as an Environmental Engineering major. But both plan to keep tabs on BAST and also to figure out how to further amplify the voice student-athletes have at the intersection of Green & Sports.

Sam landed at the University of Idaho to work as a graduate assistant with the track team there — she hopes to help student-athletes at the Moscow, ID school start their own version of BAST. Jesikah, who will be in Portland for at least the next six months, working at an internship with Clean Water Services, is bullish on BAST’s future: “The group is in great hands with Marie Guelich (women’s basketball), Sam McKinnon (women’s cross country and track) and Mimi Grosselius women’s rowing) taking the reins.”

The new leadership team is expected to make climate change a bigger focus of BAST’s agenda by, per Jesikah, “measuring and reducing the carbon footprint of OSU athletics, showing a BAST video on the scoreboard at Reser Stadium, and, on a micro-level, bringing composting to the athletic training tables

 

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The GSB Interview: Anastasia Zotou; Bringing Green-Sports to Greece

So you think building awareness and the impact of Green-Sports is challenging in North America? Try doing so in Greece, a country that continues to be ravaged from the after effects of the 2008 global financial collapse. Yet that’s exactly what Anastasia Zotou is doing with her consulting firm, Zoten. GSB talked to Ms. Zotou about her inspiration, the work she is doing, and what the future for Green-Sports looks like in the country that gave the world the Olympic Games.

 

GreenSportsBlog: The Green-Sports movement started in the largest, wealthiest economies—North America, Great Britain, Germany, France. No surprise there. So I jumped at the opportunity to talk to a woman who is pioneering Green-Sports in Greece. Greece is a relatively small country with a great sporting culture — it of course is the home of the ancient and modern Olympic Games. It also is, arguably, the European Union (EU) member that is suffering the most from the 2008 global financial crisis. So, I figured this would be a unique story for GSB readers. Anastasia; thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Anastasia Zotou: Thank you, Lew. My story starts in Seattle, where I was born to parents from Greece. I first visited Greece when I was 17—it was a major culture shock. Said I would never go back.

 

Anastasia Zotou Dionisis Nikolopoulos

Anastasia Zotou (Photo credit: Dionisis Nikolopoulos)

 

GSB: Somehow I have a feeling that “never” really didn’t last that long.

AZ: You’re right. I gave Greece another chance, went back when I was 21. I had a much better experience. Came home to finish up my Business Administration studies at Central Washington University with a plan to go into banking. Then I went back to Athens after graduation with no real plan. But I felt like this was the place for me. Learned Greek. Started teaching English. Got married. I started looking into Masters programs before my son was born but wasn’t able to take the entrance exam because I was giving birth on the exact day and time as the exam. It was a little difficult to be there so I waited for next year’s test.

GSB: To get an MBA in Banking?

AZ: No. In Environmental Management and Policy. Turns out I wasn’t passionate about corporate business. Was disgusted with it, tell you the truth. I was outdoorsy and felt — hoped — that sustainable business was something that was going to take off in Greece. I found a remote Masters program on the island of Lesbos…

GSB: The island where many Syrian and other refugees from that part of the world enter Greece…

AZ: That’s right.

GSB: Wow…

AZ: Yeah…It’s a very difficult situation there, obviously. But I did the program remotely — I finished in a little more than two and a half years. Turns out I was much older than most of the Greeks in the program — I was 35 when I started. This was just not done. In fact, I had to deal with that during the application process…

GSB: Meaning “why should I give this spot to you, a 35 year old?”

AZ: Exactly. And I was a mother, which also was unusual. When I was doing research back in 2008 for my dissertation, “Environmental Management Systems,” I would take my one year old son around with me to a mall in Athens where I was conducting surveys. People there were very surprised to see me there with my son.

GSB: That stinks! I’m glad you didn’t let it stop you. What were you surveying at the mall?

AZ: I was trying to find out if the management of the mall and of the stores in the mall were interested in cooperating on environmental management systems — waste management, energy efficiency, water efficiency — that sort of thing. I was able to demonstrate that the ROI was quick. But mall management wouldn’t talk to me at first and most of the store management personnel I talked to were confused, they weren’t really clued in on what environmental management systems meant — some of the younger folks got it but that was it.

GSB: Did that discourage you? I imagine your son was ok with it.

AZ: I wasn’t deterred. I just kept showing up until the people would talk to me. But, as I was finishing the dissertation, the economic crash happened. Sustainability consulting was what I wanted to do — but with the crash and a young family, it was very hard to pursue at that time.

GSB: So what did you do?

AZ: I continued to teach English and started working out of my house on environmental projects to save on office expenses, but it was challenging to stay focused working from home and managing my teaching at the same time. For my family it was and is a struggle, but there are many, many people in Greece who are having an even harder time with the job cuts and salary reductions. I will tell you, almost ten years after the crash, the country is still in a bad, bad situation.

GSB: And that’s the environment in which you wanted to start a new company in a category that didn’t exist? Piece of cake! So how and when did you start your environmental consulting work? And where did Green-Sports come in?

AZ: My initial plan was to work with businesses in sustainability. This was challenging because it’s hard for businesses to invest in sustainability when they can’t keep their doors open nor keep up with expenses. It really was sports that kicked things into another gear. You see, at around that time, I took up running. Which was surprising because I really hated to run!

GSB: Were you an athlete of any stripe?

AZ: I had played soccer and lacrosse when I was young but nothing really once I had gotten to Greece aside from running a bit on a treadmill at home. But, one of the school parents said “why don’t you come to the track?” So I went. And I saw an older man talking to some of the runners at the track. I kept seeing him almost every time I’d go to the track. Finally, I was introduced to Panayiotis Skoulis aka “The Teacher.” Turns out, he had been a runner his whole life and is an amazing, inspirational man. Holds various age group records in Greece in the marathon. In fact, he was the first man in modern times to retrace the route of Pheidippides from Athens to Sparta to Athens (149 miles each way), without a support team in his 50s. In his early 60s, he got Parkinson’s disease and kept running races, including a 50 km race (31 miles) against his doctor’s advice. Anyway, that first day we met, he asked me what my running plan was. Running plan?!?! I had none. So I blurted out I’d like to run a marathon. I didn’t want to run a marathon but, for some reason, those words came out of my mouth! The next day, he came to the track with a training program for me. I was one of the first runners in what would become a 40-person running team that he coaches, including women who had never run before and who are now running races over 60 km in some cases. Every day. For free. He’s now 81 and can’t run anymore but he still coaches us. And I built up to run a marathon — not fast, mind you, but I completed it — the 2013 Athens Marathon.

 

Anastasia Coach

Panayiotis Skoulis, aka “The Teacher,” and Anastasia Zotou (Photo credit: Anastasia Zotou)

 

GSB: What an amazing guy your coach is! Congratulations on your transformation from “running hater” to marathoner. But how does a Green-Sports consulting startup come from this?

AZ: Well, as I was running my first marathon, I noticed how much waste there was along the route. I started playing around with the idea of reducing waste at road races and thought I am going to start a consulting firm to do just that! So about a year ago I finally made the decision to take the risk and open a consulting office in Athens.

GSB: I love that! And you called it Zoten. What does that name mean?

AZ: One of my students suggested I combine my last name, Zotou, and environment. And, voilà, Zoten became our name.

GSB: I like it! So how did you get started?

AZ: ‘The Teacher’ introduced me to athletic clubs who organize races all over Greece. I asked them if they’d be interested in a green race. Just like the store owners at the mall I spoke to for my dissertation, these folks didn’t really get it at first but once I explained the idea of recycling and waste reduction, they began to listen more intently. So we started in 2015 pitching small athletic clubs with maybe 200-500 members. Their races might draw 200 runners to a couple thousand. Our basic proposal included waste management, and environmental awareness of the event itself…

GSB: …You weren’t going into Scope 3 emissions, and getting into the emissions of their supply chains, my guess…

AZ: You’re right. Anything more than the basics would be too much.

GSB: So with all those challenges, have you found some races that would work with you?

AZ: Yes. One thing that has impacted our success has been whether the host cities would cooperate with us. One race will have a great partnership with a city; in another race, the city will neglect or forget to bring recycling bins.

GSB: Yikes!! Talk about some of those clients…

AZ: One was the municipality of Andros Island in collaboration with A.C.C. (Athletic Cultural Club) Telmessos North Makris-Marathon who organized a half marathon there. The municipality was cooperative with us and we were able to work with the local recycling company who provided us with recycling bins and weighed the waste collected after the race was finished. There were about 250 runners, 450 biodegradable cups were used at the water stations, 1600 plastic water bottles were used but we managed to collect over 35 kilos of recyclable waste after the race. This may not sound like a large amount but considering the fact that this had never been done before and we managed to divert this waste from the landfill, we considered it a success.

 

Andros Recycling

Recycling installation and signage from Zoten at the Telmessos North Makris-Marathon (Photo credit: Anastasia Zotou)

 

GSB: Hey you gotta start small. And from small things, come big things.

AZ: Absolutely! Another client was a 10k in the center of Athens organized by the Athenian Runners Club.  In this case the municipality did not bring the appropriate bins to the race as requested. It also took place in the middle of the terrible garbage strike a couple of months ago. That clearly was not ideal for an environmental effort.

GSB: You might say…

AZ: But we press on, so I am currently finishing an assignment with the club on sustainability for the 2017 Pheidippides Race. These projects were pro bono as the concept of sustainable races was new and we needed to prove the concept. As we demonstrate our ability to reduce waste, save energy and save the race organizers money, revenue will follow.

GSB: I am glad you are bullish. Plus it seems to me like you’re working from a “low base” — meaning that environmental consciousness is low in Greece, so the only direction to go is up, it seems.

AV: You’re right. Recycling in Greece is not nearly as advanced as in the US. There’s a lack of sophistication and interest from consumers, companies and governments. But it’s getting better slowly.

GSB: What about composting?

AZ: Races aren’t there yet but there is interest…Composting is part of our next step plan, which also includes better public transportation planning for sports events, more prominent signage and other forms of fan education.

GSB: Does climate change figure into the equation at all with the races, with fan education?

AZ: Not yet.

GSB: Don’t worry; we’re still working on communicating climate change — its challenges and opportunities — through sports here in the States. We’ve got a long way to go. I guess in Greece, you have to crawl before you can walk before you can run, Green-Sports-wise.

AZ: Absolutely. And I am pushing it. Not only in adding to our toolkit for our smaller races, but using our success to attract the bigger races.

GSB: What about going beyond running races to events in stadiums and arenas? I’m thinking Olympiacos F.C., the number one soccer club in the Athens area, and its 32,000+ seat Karaiskaki Stadium and/or AEK Athens, which plays at 69,000 seat Olympic Stadium, would benefit from saving money and being greener.

 

Olympiacos Stadium

Karaiskaki Stadium, home of Olympiacos F.C. in Athens (Photo credit: Olympiacos F.C.)

 

AZ: Soccer and basketball, the two biggest team sports in Greece, are certainly on our radar screen. We would like to use the approach (recycling, waste management) that has been successful with road races in stadiums and arenas. As a startup, a big key to branching out to the stadium/arena sports is connections. That’s why I made the investment to go to Paris a couple of months ago for the Sports and Sustainability International (SandSI) conference. Meeting people in the European Green-Sports world gave me a needed jolt of enthusiasm as well as providing me some contacts at higher levels to expand our business to higher profile events.

 

 

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GSB News and Notes: Dartford F.C., Another Lower Level English Football Club Goes Green; Adidas Green Investments Grow; Italian Motorcycle Racing Embraces Sustainability

GreenSportsBlog has written often about Forest Green Rovers F.C., which plays in the fourth tier of English football/soccer. But the “Greenest Team in Sports” is not the only mid-lower tier club to build sustainability into its DNA. Dartford F.C., which currently plays in England’s sixth tier, has also made a significant greening commitment. Adidas has increased its use of green bonds.  And the Gran Premio di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini motorcycle race gives sustainability a high profile. All in a post Labor Day GSB News & Notes.

 

DARTFORD F.C. GIVES FOREST GREEN ROVERS COMPETITION IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL SUSTAINABILITY GAME

Starting out in 1888, the Dartford Football Club in Kent, located 18 miles southeast of London, was formed by members of a local workingmen’s club. The club has always toiled in the middle-lower rungs of the English football pyramid, most often being situated between the fifth and eighth tiers.

The club ran into serious financial difficulties 1992, forcing it to leave its venerable Watling Street ground. Over the next 14 years, the club became a nomad, moving from stadium to stadium until a new injection of funding and a commitment to build a permanent home venue arrived from owners Steve Irving and Dave Skinner. They also determined that the stadium would be on the cutting edge from an environmental point of view.

Dartford F.C.’s 4,097 seat Princes Park, which opened in 2006, became the UK’s first sustainable, purpose-built small-sized stadium. It:

  • Is within walking distance of the city centre, which reduces vehicular traffic as compared to other like sized stadiums that are often sited on the perimeter of a city or town
  • Boasts on-site solar panels, state-of-the-art (for 2006) insulation, and energy efficient lighting
  • Has an advanced reclaimed rainwater system. Water run-off from the green roof is controlled through sustainable drainage systems into two lakes constructed along with the stadium. The lakes ensure that in an average rainfall year, the pitch/field can be watered and maintained without using the town’s water supply.
  • Was built with sustainable construction materials
  • Uses under floor heating on both levels of the clubhouse, which provide a more energy efficient method of heating the building
  • Reused excavated earth to landscape the external courtyard areas around the stadium

While this is groundbreaking, what really sets Princes Park’s design apart from other similarly sized stadia is its bold use of sustainably harvested timber and green roofs for the clubhouse and terraces. The timber is much lighter, compared with steel and concrete, which made it easier and less energy intensive to transport. Its insulation properties and low thermal mass help to reduce fuel usage and bills. The green roof offers a natural cooling and air filtration system.

 

Princes Park Green Roof

Princes Park, with its distinctive and state of the art green roof, serves as the home of Dartford F.C. in Kent England (Photo credit: Sustainability in Sport)

 

So now GreenSportsBlog has two smallish-but-green clubs to pull for in English soccer: Forest Green Rovers, now in the fourth tier, and Dartford F.C., now in the sixth.

 

ADIDAS GREENENERGY FUND REACHES $10.8 MILLION

The Adidas Group greenENERGY Fund is a capital investment fund originally created in 2012 to accelerate the company’s carbon reductions, attain and verify energy and cost savings, as well as document and share best practices across all of its facilities. Individual Adidas manufacturing and administrative sites submit applications for efficiency projects to the company’s Finance, Engineering, and Corporate Real Estate Steering Committee, which evaluates applications based on their projected impact on the entire portfolio of projects. Adidas’ fund set an aggressive portfolio level goal of 20 percent Internal Rate of Return (IRR) on the energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Projects with lower returns can be pursued as long as they are balanced by projects with higher than average results.

 

adidas green

Adidas Group’s corporate headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Renovations and environmental improvements there and at other company facilities, are funded in part by the Adidas Group greenEnergy Fund (Photo credit: Adidas Group)

 

As of December, the fund has invested $10.8 million in 61 energy efficiency and renewable energy projects since it began in 2012 and forecasts an impressive IRR of 29 percent across the entire project portfolio. Worth noting is the fact that several energy savings projects were identified by Adidas’ workforce.

 

MOTORCYCLING CHAMPIONSHIPS IN ITALY GO GREEN

Environmental and social sustainability will be among the key ingredients at the Gran Premio TIM San Marino e Riviera di Rimini, the 13th round of the 2017 World Motorcycling Championship. It will take place this weekend (September 8-10) at the Misano World Circuit in Rimini, Italy on the Adriatic coast.

The KiSS (Keep it Shiny and Sustainable) Misano program aims to make spectators, racing teams and riders more aware of the importance of environmental and social sustainability at motorcycling events.

  • Spectators are encouraged by a multi-media ad and social media (#kissmissano) campaign, to come to the circuit by using public means of transportation, car pooling, bicycles
  • Recycling and used battery bins will be deployed all around the race circuit
  • Used cooking oil will be collected for transformation into biofuel
  • Surplus food from the hospitality suites will be collected and donated

 

Pisano Circuit

Aerial view of the Misano World Circuit in Rimini, Italy (Photo credit: LCR Honda)

 

KiSS Misano is a ratcheting up of the event’s longstanding sustainability heritage. In 2011 the Misano circuit became the first in Italy to be equipped with a photovoltaic solar system that produces some 450,000 Kw per year. Last year’s World Ducati Week, which drew more than 60,000 visitors) was the first motorcycling event in Italy to obtain the “sustainable event” certification according to the ISO 2012-1 standard.

Coordinating the Misano circuit’s greening efforts is Right Hub, an Italian sustainability start-up that recently obtained B Corporation certification.

 

 

The GSB Interview: Ryan Hall, Greening the College Football Playoff

With the 2017 college football season set to move into high gear this weekend, GreenSportsBlog takes a look for the first time at the Greening of the College Football Playoff (CFP). The CFP, now about to enter its fourth season, draws higher television ratings than just about any other non-NFL sports event in the United States. Given its incredibly high profile, a strong greening program could resonate throughout broad swaths of American sports fandom. To understand what the CFP has done, sustainability-wise and where its green efforts are going, GreenSportsBlog talked with Ryan Hall, its Director of Community Relations.

GreenSportsBlog: Ryan, before we get to the nuts and bolts of the greening programs at the College Football Playoff (CFP), I gotta ask you: How did you get to be the CFP’s Director of Community Relations?

Ryan Hall: Well Lew, I grew up in Austin and went to Rice University there as an undergrad. Went on to Notre Dame for law school…

GSB: A step up in class in terms of football and basketball I’d say…

RH: You’d be right about that but I didn’t drink the Notre Dame Kool-Aid, didn’t become a huge fan. But I did meet my future wife the first day of orientation in South Bend.

GSB: Congratulations!

RH: Thank you. Anyway, I practiced as an attorney in Cincinnati for three years before going to work for the NCAA in Indianapolis in the compliance department. Did that for seven years. Then my wife’s firm opened a Dallas office so we moved down there — strong family connections.

GSB: And Dallas is where the College Football Playoff headquarters is…

RH: Given my experience at the NCAA, I was able to make some connections at the CFP. I ended up taking the job of Director of Community Relations in 2015, right after the first CFP. Sustainability, through our “Playoff Green” initiative, is a core part of my job, in addition to developing and ultimately executing the community relations programs during CFP Week, communication of, and enforcement of regulations, as well as membership relations.

 

Ryan Hall CFP

Ryan Hall, Director of Community Relations, College Football Playoff (Photo credit: College Football Playoff)

 

GSB: So talk about Playoff Green. What is it?

RH: The folks at the CFP knew from the very beginning that we needed to have a strong green commitment and thus a fan-facing program. Early on, we engaged Jack Groh, who manages the greening programs for the NFL, including at their premier events, the Super Bowl and NFL Draft, to build Playoff Green for us.

GSB: Jack is a natural fit for yo…

RH: You got that right!

GSB: Why do you think green was so central to the CFP?

RH: Well, from before the time I got here until now, the organizers of the CFP have realized that we have a responsibility to do more than put on a great semifinals and national championship. Of course, that is our primary task but, since we see the CFP as being a game changer in the “Big Game” landscape, we also want to be a positive game changer on societal issues…

GSB: Like sustainability and climate change? That makes sense to me, especially since colleges and universities have millions of students who study climate change, sustainability and the like…

RH: Exactly right. For those reasons and more, we knew we had to make the CFP a green event and get students into it. Not only college students, but also young people all the way down to the grammar school level. So we need our green program to have strong educational components down to the district level, including curriculum. And there are, of course, strong “big game” precedents for green community programs, including the Super Bowl, Olympics and FIFA World Cup. But, along with the Final Four, we’re the only big game event that has a potential army of college students, passionate about sustainability, at our disposal.

GSB: So how did you go about building the CFP greening program? Is climate change a part of it?

RH: Well, we created a foundation almost at our creation, the CFP Foundation. Our greening curriculum that gets deployed in the markets where our games are played each year has climate change as a core pillar. Our team has educators and it’s on us to 1) be leaders, educationally-speaking, and 2) leave the cities and towns that host us in better shape than when we arrived.

GSB: So talk about the specifics of the CFP greening programs…

RH: The true heart of Playoff Green has been tree planting. It started as a challenge, as a competition between groups of students from the four competing schools in parks at the game sites. The students were really into it, as were the localities. Then, with Jack Groh’s guidance, we broadened the project from parks into schools. For our 2017 game in Tampa, we ran a semester-long project in which we planted trees on the grounds of underserved public schools. In 2018, we expect Atlanta, host of the the championship game, to go even bigger as our curriculum and tree planting will reach even more schools.

 

Jack Groh CFPO 2017-bailey-50

Playoff Green Campus Challenge at Bailey Elementary, Dover, Florida, January 6, 2017 (Photo credit: College Football Playoff)

 

GSB: Atlanta is a great place, from a green-sports point of view, especially with the championship game being played at the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, expected to be the NFL’s first LEED Platinum-certified stadium.

RH: We are very excited about being in, arguably, the greenest football stadium in the USA. It will be our biggest Playoff Green yet, especially with our partners at the Atlanta College Football Playoff Host Committee working with Jack Groh. The campus challenge will be bigger and better, involving more kids, from grammar schools to middle schools to high schools. We are also working with DonorsChoose.org the great nonprofit that helps fund teachers’ projects in underfunded districts. As schools become involved and meet the parameters of the Playoff Green challenge, we provided gift cards to DonorsChoose.org that help teachers at the school fund projects. We put resources directly into the school and classrooms.

 

CFP Bins 2017

An example of enhanced Trash and Recycling efforts at 2017 College Football Playoff events in the Tampa, FL area (Photo credit: College Football Playoff)

 

GSB: Are CFP corporate sponsors getting involved with Playoff Green, and if so, what does that look like?

RH: Corporate sponsorship is coming but we need to do it right — it’s a bit of a challenge, as we want to make sure there’s not a whiff of greenwashing. So we will be careful but it will happen.

GSB: That makes perfect sense. Finally, how are you and the CFP going to get the Playoff Green story out to the broader public? Will ESPN promote it? Because my biggest concern, and it’s not limited to the CFP, is that mega-events will keep their greening good works under the radar. This has largely been the case with the Super Bowl — my sense is that precious few know that the Super Bowl has been carbon neutral for more than a decade — and with the FIFA World Cup. Thankfully, the organizers of the Rio 2016 Olympics produced a vignette on climate change during the Opening Ceremonies that was viewed by an estimated worldwide audience of 1 billion people. Will ESPN tell the Playoff Green story on air?

RH: Great question. Outsiders really don’t know how great a partner ESPN has been, especially as it relates to Playoff Green. They’ve provided resources in terms of the implementation of Playoff Green and the tree planting, including funding. Playoff Green public service announcements (PSA’s) will be aired in stadium in Atlanta.

GSB: What about on air? Because 25 million people will watch the game on ESPN as compared to maybe 75,000 in stadium.

RH: That’s something we’ll work on in future years with our TV partner, ESPN as well as future partners.

GSB: That’s great…you know we will follow up on that down the road.

 

 

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