I happened to see a post over at Sideline Soccer that caught my eye. The folks at TreeHugger listed soccer as the 2nd most environmentally unfriendly sport because of how popular it is and how much traveling the players do:
For many, soccer is a fantastic, beautiful sport. The game unites cultures, countries, and backgrounds in a common bond of athletic competition. It requires nothing but some friends, a ball, and an afternoon full of fresh air: Unless you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who play it professionally. Then, you’ll need buses, cars, and airplanes to transport you across continents. After all, soccer (rather, football, to everyone but us stubborn Americans) is the biggest, most widely followed sport in the world–and that means players across Europe, Australia, North and South America, Africa, Asia, virtually everywhere except Antarctica are traveling from game to game, collectively creating a fossil fuel-burning storm
OK, I’m a fairly environmentally friendly person and do believe we’re killing our planet, but that’s a pretty weak reason to make the sport #2.
But it got me thinking of youth soccer and the impact we have on the environment. Our league makes every effort to have enough trash cans and recycle bins near where parents and teams sit, but even with close to a dozen each for a four field complex, they are overflowing after a Friday and Saturday of matches. Even worse is how many plastic water bottles are thrown into the trash and not recycled.
Youth soccer is REALLY unfriendly to the environment in terms of trash generated. Many of us choose convenience over environmental impact. Our family often will buy a couple of cases of bottled water at Costco and the kids grab one on the way to practice as we rush out the door instead of using water bottles. On match days, there’s the cooler of drinks consumed by the adults and kids. As a coach, I see MANY half filled water bottles that players toss in the recycle bins (or worse, leave on the ground – oh the hills that should be run for that).
On a bigger scale, I was responsible for stocking our concessions stand for a few years. We have around 900 players in our league. We sold $20,000 in snacks and drinks, and the bulk of it was drinks in plastic bottles. I would run to Costco with a full size pickup every week or two and load it down with dozens of cases of water, Gatorade, and soda. The latter, at least, being easy to recycle. The trick is not all leagues have recycle bins.
We’re just one league. 17 million kids play some form of soccer. The mind boggles at how many clear plastic bottles are used and throw out by that group alone.
The easy answer is, as soccer families, we should make it a point of using friendlier methods to keep the kids hydrated, including water bottles (just don’t use bottles with Bisphenol-A) and mixing up sports drinks from powder instead of premixed in plastic bottles. That’s not too hard to do, and it certainly would have a BIG impact if a lot of people did it and leagues started to encourage families to reduce their plastic waste. But that’s easier said then done, and I admit our family isn’t very conscientious about it. We use water bottles maybe half the time we head to practice and the rest we grab bottled water. Leagues would be loathe to lose a revenue source from concessions. But here’s a thought. If you could get an inexpensive ‘fountain soda machine’ in your concession stand, say 2-4 ‘spouts’, and load it with Powerade/Gatorade of various flavors – you could offer to fill water bottles for X amount of money and likely STILL make more in profit. The reason is, the profit margin on fountain drinks is HUGE. Wonder how practical that would be. You wouldn’t need CO2, since you wouldn’t want to sell soda that way (well maybe you would to the parents in paper cups)
What other ideas do you all have that families and leagues could take to reduce their waste? I know for us, just having more recycle bins and encouraging people to USE them (vs tossing bottles in the trash) would be a big thing. Encourage parents to talk with their kids, because it’s the kids who usually will toss a bottle in the trash – they don’t know better. Beyond that, it would take some creativity.
Thoughts?
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm
We always send our kids to practice with their refillable sports bottle. The waste I see is at the games when parents sign up to bring the snacks. This is nice but would be less wasteful if we did this ourselves as well. Interested to see any suggestions your readers might have.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I’ve found most people bring snacks in the foil bags – not exactly biodegradable, but also very minimal in terms of waste volume. I’ve found key placement of trash cans can have a BIG impact on how much trash gets left out after games. We try to keep trash cans within 20′ of any team bench or parent sideline.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
This really is something to think about. What if clubs ordered and sold club-branded reusable water bottles? The good ones? Support your club, and try to be enviro-friendly at the same time.
I love the Gatorade fountain idea. Could do the same with water if you had a good, clean source. Some tap water could taste funny, depending on the location of your fields.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Yes, and a decent water filtration system (NOT reverse osmosis, which wastes an insane amount of water) isn’t that expensive.
Like the idea of the club logo water bottles. Could be a fundraiser to boot!
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
The number of bottles my family was using during a season was insane. Last year we bought stainless bottles to take to games, the largest size for the player and my husband and I have smaller ones. My son also had a huge insulated thermos that is in someone else’s mini van somewhere in the city…so I can’t reuse that one.
Luckily at his age group they don’t “do” snacks anymore so I don’t have to come up with a solution to 20 packs of gummy goo!
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
We buy several quart bottles of Gatorade and re-use the bottle (either with water or powdered Gatorade) until it gets too hard to clean anymore. It’s not environmental conscientiousness as much as it being cheap. :p
The Gatorade fountain idea is great, as are the team logo bottles. I may suggest it to our club, since we have a concession stand at the park to cater to the kids and parents during practice, as well as during games.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
The upfront cost of a fountain machine could be prohibitive, but with many smaller food establishments going out of business, you might be able to pickup a used one cheap. Plus if you stay away from the carbonated drinks, you don’t need to worry about CO2, though it’s not impossible to manage. eBay often has a lot of these available (we’ve looked into getting a used hot chocolate/cappuccino machine that makes it from hot water and powder) We sell Hot Chocolate and Coffee like crazy during the cold months, which are 1/3 the season at least.
If anyone gives it a go, by all means share your experiences. Be sure to check with your health dept too and see if there are regulations related to that and concession stands.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Really, then no one should play soccer. That way, no grass has to be mowed or watered for the fields. No plasic bottles are used. No gas is used to drive to the fields, no lights are powered on at night.
Yes, just think about how wonderful it would be.
LOL!
Maybe we should all sit in a cave and chew on burlap. Think about how environmentally friendly that would be. While you’re at it, dont think of letting your kids use a leather ball or cleats.
Come to think about it. What about those cleats. There are millions of them. Made of plastic (think of the petroleum being raped from mother earth) its just terrible!!
March 4th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
So because we can’t eliminate all environmental impacts of youth soccer we shouldn’t try to mitigate some of them? It has to be all or nothing?
March 4th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I’ve got an even better idea, Tear up the fields and get rid of the grass. Think of the hundreds of gallons of water used for a soccer field. Let alone fertilizer, mowing, etc.
And uniforms, think of the millions of uniforms that are made each year. What a waste! They should be biodegradable, or those athletes should just have to play nude!
March 4th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Hmmm not sure that would work too well for your kids. My main point was simply about reducing plastic bottle waste. But if you think you need to go to such extremes where you live, by all means have at it!
October 8th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I love your blog theme, can you tell me the name of it or where you downloaded it? thx.
October 10th, 2010 at 10:34 am
StudioPress (see the link in the bottom)