Mark your calendars! Friday, October 6, is Green Sports Day, a day for discussion about the sporting sector’s role in tackling climate change. The mission is to harness the power of sport to drive positive environmental change and unite athletes, fans, and communities worldwide to take action against climate change. The vision of Green Sports Day is to create a sustainable future for sports through education, collaboration, and innovation. In Canada, the goals are to accelerate a conversation on sustainable sport and climate action, educate the Canadian sports community on best practices for sustainable sport and to celebrate the work being done to ‘green’ the sports sector. There will be a virtual summit to learn from local, provincial, national and international voices to the steps being taken towards sustainability in sport. You can join in as well by registering here.

The Green Sports Day Canada initiative is spreadhead by a group of active and former Olympians, including Emilie Fournel (Canoe/Kayak), Martha McCabe (Swimming, @Creative Deconstructive Lab), Philippe Marquis (Freestyle Ski), Melissa Humana-Paredes (Beach Volleyball), Oluseyi Smith (Athletics/Bobsleigh), Oliver Scholfield (Field Hockey), and Donna Vakalis (Modern Penathlon, also a UofT alumni), as well as other sustainability professionals from organizations such as the Canadian Olympic Committee, Canada Games Council, The Sport Ecology Group, University of Guelph, and last but not least, University of Toronto. Our very own Colin Campbell, Associate Director of Partnerships at Climate Positive Energy has been supporting the team get ready for the big day.

One of the biggest challenges for sport is that the majority of emissions are Scope 3, meaning they are not produced by the sporting organizations themself and are not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for up and down its value chain. As one of CPEs areas of interest is in supporting Measurements & Modelling projects, such as that funded to develop an accounting framework for Scope 3 emissions. The learnings from this research by Shashi Kant, Yue Li, Jim MacLellan, Cynthia Goh, and Soo Min Toh could go on to support other organizations such as national sporting organizations to reducing their emissions.