MINEV at the only sport-related event of the EU Green Week
In the framework of the Green Sports Hub Europe project and hosted by ACR+, with the support of ACR+ member Zero Waste Scotland, the EU Green Week partner event 'Greening sports for achieving participative and contributory circular communities: skills and know-how for getting there' not only looked at challenges and solutions for sustainable sport, discussed potentials for increased cooperation, peer to peer support and learning and the role of formal education and relevant institutions in providing appropriate skills, but also presented some of the project's key outputs. These includes the mapping of existing initiatives, tools and standards, results of the survey on sustainability in European sports, leisure and fitness organisations, as well as the project’s most valuable one – the self-assessment tool for sport organisation to track their progress in transitioning towards more environmentally sustainable practices.
This event was also an opportunity for ACR+, MINEV advisory partner, to highlight its work in the fields of tourism, sports and culture, researching behaviour, observing habits and subsequently exploring and testing various circular economy solutions to be applied by cities and regions. ACR+ set of presentations on tools, findings and observations with its own portfolio composed of previous and current projects such as those on environmental management in tourism – TOURISME (funded by COSME), waste minimisation MINEV (INTERREG), or in sport TACKLE (funded by LIFE) and ACCESS (funded by Erasmus+), among others.
Eva Rebmann, the acting Deputy Director at the European Olympic Committee EU Office, shared a final key remark: “Sports must change and not only for image or marketing reasons – our societies suffer from climate change and sports have the power to change mindsets and current processes. We see that tools, platforms, learning modules, communication materials, support and much more is available and await out there, we all as a community need to make the best out of them”.