By Suganthi Simon, Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit Organizer, U.S. EPA
Sustainability is the new norm for colleges and universities. Sustainability in collegiate sports and recreation is about ensuring the health and well-being of students, the efficient use of natural resources, community involvement and stewardship, and ensuring the economic vitality of the university in its totality. The students, alumni, public, and even some sponsors are now expecting collegiate sports to embrace sustainability—making it a moral imperative that should not be ignored. Adopting sustainable strategies will be the key to ensuring a competitive, economic, and social advantage for colleges and universities in the coming years.
Colleges and universities across North America have done well to take up this call, having been at the forefront of adopting a diverse array of sustainable practices. Many campuses have been leaders in demonstrating how to integrate economic vitality, environmental stewardship, health, wellness, and social responsibility successfully in student life and college curricula.
However, what has been a more difficult journey for many colleges and universities is bridging the gap between the campus activities and collegiate sports.
Come join the discussion at the Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit.The fourth annual Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit (CS3), held June 24-27 in Boulder, Colorado, offers attendees the chance to network, learn, and exchange ideas with peers from across North America on ways in which athletic and sports programs can join the campus movement and invest in activities that are socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. The Summit is organized through a partnership between the U.S. EPA, Keep America Beautiful, College & University Recycling Coalition, Green Sports Alliance, Coca-Cola Recycling, Georgia World Congress Center, NIRSA, RecycleMania, and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. CS3 focuses on bringing together collegiate athletic departments, recreational sports, sustainability departments, and facility operations to better integrate sustainability into sports events and operations.
This integration can ignite students, alumni, and fans around a common purpose. Since 61% of the public follow sports with a passion while only 13% follow science, this is our opportunity to harness that passion for sports by engaging and activating fans and participants to be stewards for health, wellness, social responsibility, and environmental protection (SustainableBusiness.com).
As the only national gathering focused on collegiate sports sustainability, we are creating an open, equal platform for inter-departmental collaboration. This year’s agenda is thoughtfully designed to bring together collegiate athletics staff, campus recreational managers, sustainability professionals, and recycling/facility managers in order to identify ways to achieve common campus sustainability goals through sports and athletics, save money, foster better inter-departmental relationships, and increase recognition for institutional efforts.
Gene Smith, Athletic Director, The Ohio State University at the Athletic Directors Workshop during the 2013 Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit.The Summit features engaging speakers with real world experience in how to achieve economic and environmental results by going green in collegiate sports. The agenda also emphasizes opportunities to share and network through roundtables and informal meetings in a relaxed setting.
The Summit has doubled in size every year since its inception in 2011. This impressive growth speaks to the power of the Summit’s purpose—the need for a forum for colleges and universities to come together and to develop the required inter-departmental relationships needed to integrate sustainability into collegiate sports. To this end, the 2013 Summit had representation from over 40 colleges and universities and 15 athletic department staff in attendance from athletic programs across the country. Attendees represented the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 12, Ivies, Sunbelt, Division I, II, III colleges and universities.
For 2014, CS3 is very proud to welcome our newest partner, NIRSA: Leaders in Collegiate Recreation, to our efforts. With NIRSA’s partnership, the CS3 is able to complete the connections that will successfully integrate sustainability into collegiate sports. As Mick Deluca, NIRSA Past President and 2013 CS3 speaker says, “The Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit provided an excellent opportunity to learn, share, and network as well as expand the discussion of the valuable platform of sports in a collegiate environment. Sharing ideas among athletic, recreation, and sustainability colleagues helps create partnerships and collaborations that take advantage of the unique external window of collegiate sports as well as the internal activation through recreation, campus sports, and student engagement.”
We invite more NIRSA professionals to join us at the University of Colorado Boulder for the fourth annual CS3. Register by May 16 to take advantage of early bird pricing for this incredible opportunity!
