SUSTAINABILITY IN SPORTS Right: Liverpool FC’s merchandising functions are embracing the principles of reuse, recycle and repurpose where possible across the business.
Inset Top: Rishi Jain, director of impact, Liverpool FC.
Going for gold in achieving green
Inset Bottom: Scott Field, Team GB’s director of marketing and communications.
Products of Change members, Team GB and Liverpool FC are no strangers to setting a few personal bests when it comes to the sustainable development of sport. Licensing Sports Book peers into the world of sports sustainability at scale.
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magine the sight, all 327 Team GB athletes piling through London King’s Cross and cramming onto the Eurostar the morning of the opening ceremony. Imagine if there’d been a cancellation. Or a double booking of seats. Far be it with me to argue with an Olympian over their seat reservation. As unlikely as it all sounds, these are situations Team GB staff would have taken into consideration as it made its commitment in 2023 to cut its emissions and travel to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games by train. They wouldn’t have been alone in such an endeavour, either. We know ‘travel’ was a major part of the gameplan among Paris 2024 organisers to deliver the ‘greenest Olympic Games’ in modern history. It’s why over 80% of the competition’s venues were kept within 10km of the Olympic Village itself, extensive
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use was made of the city’s public transport network, and why the city invested in over 400km of new bike lanes. Paris 2024 had long made its intention clear to halve the average emissions produced by London 2012 and Rio 2016 (remembering that each averaged around 3.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent) and thus highlight the subject of sustainability in sport on a global scale that simply couldn’t be ignored. Team GB secured 65 medals in total in Paris - just rewards for the years of dedication, preparation and sacrifice made by athletes to compete on the world’s stage. But as meticulous as their training may be, so too are the efforts going on behind the scenes when it comes to measuring and reducing Team GB’s collective environmental footprint.
LICENSING SPORTS BOOK 2024
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