CzechCrunch: Sports are destroying the planet. We saw a positive change at the Euro and the Olympics, says the manager of the Tipsport Foundation

Sustainability is an advanced topic abroad, rather a rarity in Czech sport. What can clubs do better? Zuzana Zděnková, manager of the Tipsport Foundation, talks about this.

A year ago, you launched the Sport without waste project focused on the sustainability and optimization of waste management in Czech sports clubs. What does the current status of the project look like and has the development so far met your expectations?
The project is happily growing under our hands! The pilot in four football clubs was a useful introduction to the reality of stadiums and helped us better understand the obstacles faced by clubs looking to reduce their environmental impact. Thanks to this, we continuously adjusted the project, our goal was and still is to achieve real changes for the better. We found that, in addition to personnel or technical barriers, the obstacles to change are, probably not surprisingly, finances and their lack. We therefore paid the clubs specific measures at their stadiums, which resulted from individual waste analyses, carried out by our expert partner INCIEN. Together, we also focused on communication with the fans and showed them, for example, that sorting garbage can be normal even at football.

From the football field, the project is now expanding to hockey ice and a basketball court in the fall. Here, too, we will collect data and analyze four halls from each sport. We will look at Brno, Třinec, Litvínov or the hockey club Kladno. Waste-free sport went beyond the borders this year, our Slovak colleagues from the Tipsport Foundation took it upon themselves in cooperation with the Institute of Circular Economy and literally threw themselves at the waste in four Slovak football stadiums.

Do you already have any information available from the mentioned clubs on how the introduced measures worked?
Initial analyzes from last year showed that an average of 75 percent of mixed waste could be sorted, which is a huge potential. Right now, in autumn and winter, comparative waste analyzes are being carried out in the piloted clubs, which will show how the quantity and composition of mixed waste containers has changed. Given that only a minimal amount of garbage was sorted at the stadiums and returnable cups were rather the exception, these will be nice numbers. We believe that introducing hand dryers instead of paper towels will also have a big impact. 20,000 paper towels were used during the match!

Do you know how they handle waste management in sports clubs abroad?
Foreign sports clubs are a long way ahead in their efforts to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Sorting waste or returnable cups is a matter of course, often thinking about sorting organic waste as well. The best ones also take sustainability into account in areas that have not yet been much discussed in our country, whether it is the offer of vegan snacks as an alternative to traditional burritos or the recycling of jerseys and sports equipment. A big topic and also the biggest burden on the environment is transport, whether of fans or the players themselves. For major sporting events, the number of flights is downright terrifying, creating a huge burden on the environment.

Isn’t the topic of sustainability just a fad? Are Czech sports clubs really waiting for real changes?
It’s definitely not fashion. As a member of the EU, the Czech Republic is one of the signatories of international legally binding agreements, where we have promised to work together to reduce the negative consequences of climate change and also limit the increase in global temperature. Our government must aim to fulfill these obligations with its political decisions. Sports in particular are also under pressure from international organizations and associations, which also have an obligation to fulfill their climate agreements and commitments.

It doesn’t look like that for us yet, but we could see a change in the communication of the topic during this year’s major sporting events, with the football EURO 2024 or the Paris Games. After all, UEFA, the organizer of the football championship, released a report on the sustainability of the entire event a few weeks ago, setting the bar quite high. When it comes to waste, compared to the previous Euro, this year the organizers managed to reduce the amount of waste by 36 percent, with zero percent of the waste ending up in landfills. We could see a lot of concrete steps and investments in sustainability at both events. So change is really happening!

Have you recently returned from London for the Sport Positive Summit and the BBC Green Sport Awards? What events are these?
Both events only prove that monitoring and especially reducing the negative impact of sports on the environment are really not just empty words and a fad. We took away a lot of motivation from them to continue intensively “pushing” this topic in the Tipsport Foundation and to support sports venues that are trying to change. Now in its third year, the BBC Green Sport Awards honor athletes, professional and grassroots organizations who inspire others, bring change and transcendence to the world of sport. This year’s winner of the last-named category, the company Pledgeball, also deals with the topic of waste elimination, among other things, and also cooperates with large organizers such as UEFA.

The Sport Positive Summit conference was an intensive two-day load of lectures and workshops with people who have behind them great sports projects with an impact on the environment, local communities and society. We believe that we will get some of them to the Czech Republic as well, so that they can help us show Czech sports that there is a way. One of the messages we took away from our trip to London was the realization of what a powerful platform sport and its personalities are, what enormous communication potential and social capital lies behind it.

What are the plans of the Tipsport Foundation with the Sport without waste project and in general on the topic of sustainability in sports in the coming year?
We have big plans, the scope for social change is still enormous, especially in the field of sports and sustainability. We have just closed this year’s Sázíme na klima grant call, which will support, among other things, projects from the sports environment. Lay and professional clubs that want to introduce, for example, returnable cups, more economical lighting or help with the collection of rainwater and the sorting of organic waste. Next year, we want to increase our financial support for this area even more.

In the autumn, our team was strengthened by a colleague, Martin Šlapák, in the position of ESG manager, who will extend the topic of sustainability to our entire parent company. He is a former professional footballer himself, so I believe we have found the most qualified person.

And now we are very busy with a new concept of a partner project, which will really make the topic of sustainability in sport visible and kick off. We’ll keep the details to ourselves for now, but believe me, there’s a lot to look forward to!