Game Changer

Last week, Seattle hosted the second annual Green Sports Summit where, at a gala event held at the Seattle Mariner’s Safeco Field,  Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig received the first-ever GSA Environmental Stewardship Award. This honor coincided with the release of NRDC’s report, GAME CHANGER: How the Sports Industry Is Saving The Environment, which cites that “in a cultural shift of historic proportions, the sports industry is now using influence to accelerate ecological stewardship.”

As Commissioner Selig noted, “Environmental stewardship resonates with all of us who love baseball and seeing it played on green grass and under blue skies.  Major League Baseball has a significant global platform from which its fans can be educated about the importance of environmental stewardship.”

Indeed.  Few sectors are as influential as the sports industry. While 13% of Americans say they follow science, 61% say they are sports fans. Sports is the ultimate cultural unifier and quite literally represents common ground. As a more than $400 billion industry with hundreds of millions of fans and a global supply chain that includes some of the most visible and influential corporations on Earth, it goes without saying that shifting the operations and procurement of the sports industry towards ecologically preferable products can have meaningful market and cultural influences.

It’s important to note that just six years ago, the sports greening movement did not exist. In 2006, I had the privilege of joining Dr. Allen Hershokowitz, senior scientist at NRDC, and Bob Fisher, a principal partner of the Oakland Athletics and NRDC trustee, in paying a visit to the Commissioner’s office and making that first pitch for why greening was a natural for Major League Baseball.  In fact, we produced a video featuring “The Natural” himself, Robert Redford (also an NRDC trustee) to help provide the inspiration and make the case for how sustainable practices could save money, attract sponsors, enhance the fan experience, strengthen community ties, and shape local economic growth.  It was Redford who first saw the potential for the Greensports movement after the work many of us had done greening NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles back in 2005. 

Today, the NRDC cites that the sports greening movement is one of the most influential and visible collaborations in the marketplace, with the NBA, NHL, USTA, and the NCAA recently joining the fold.  And it has the potential to become one of the most important collaborations in the history of the environmental movement. 

 “There is a reason some of the largest industries on Earth pay millions of dollars to affiliate with professional sports,” says Hershokowitz. “They know that sports offers an effective way to influence the culture of the marketplace. All industries meet on a football or baseball field. The energy, water, chemical, auto, textile, plastics, food and waste industries are all suppliers or sponsors of professional sports.”

Sports has always been a powerful engine for social change and theimportance of this cultural transformation was probably best expressed by Commissioner Selig when he likened MLB’s embrace of sustainability practices as akin to MLB’s leadership around integration with the signing of Jackie Robinson in 1948 – a full 18 years before passage of national civil rights legislation.

There are many embedded lessons here.  One is that true change and movement-building in our society requires both inspiration and leadership. It requires a solid business case, the right tools, and engagement on the ground with dozens if not hundreds of stakeholders.  Not to mention a healthy dose of patience.

But this is what change looks like.  And we’re still getting started.

MLB Goes Green | World Series 

Read Robin's previous blog post, The Games We Play, on the Green Sports Alliance