GreenSportsBlog completes its Earth Month coverage with this insightful and fast-paced podcast interview with US Senator Cory Booker. The New Jersey Democrat is a leading voice in the Senate on environmental issues, from climate justice to sustainable agriculture. Sports played a crucial role in Senator Booker’s life as a football scholarship to Stanford helped catapult him far beyond the gridiron. For these reasons and more, EcoAthletes recently inducted him as the fourth member of its Hall of Fame. He joins Green-Sports pioneer Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, climate scientist and communicator Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and legendary sports agent turned climate advocate Leigh […]

GreenSportsBlog continues its Earth Month coverage with this podcast interview with four Rutgers University student-athletes and EcoAthletes Champions: senior gymnast Kaitlyn Bertola, sophomore swimmers Halé Oal and Natalie Schick, as well as sophomore women’s lacrosse player Kelsey Klein. They, along with sophomore star middle distance runner Alex Carlson, are helping to accelerate the #ClimateComeback thanks to a partnership between EcoAthletes and Knights of the Raritan (KOTR), Rutgers’ official NIL collective. KOTR is funding the first ever climate-themed NIL deals with the Rutgers Five. In exchange, the student-athletes will take the lead on several climate-focused initiatives generated by EcoAthletes. These include […]

Did you know that horse shows — and specifically horse show footing has a massive environmental footprint, from water to carbon? I sure didn’t until I spoke with Alex Carr, the strategic marketing and communications leader at ArenaMend, the company she is helping to grow alongside her father, Dan. In today’s GreenSportsPod, Alex takes us through how ArenaMend came to be, it’s greener product offerings and how it plans to disrupt and green horse shows and potentially much, much more..  Click here to listen to our conversation! Alex Carr (Photo credit: Alex Carr) Back to GreenSportsPod: You can also listen to GreenSportsPod […]

Fiona ‘Fi’ Burnet and Tess Howard have a lot in common  — forwards and friends on Team GB’s stellar field hockey team, wicked senses of humor, and a passion for climate action which is evidenced in part by their status as EcoAthletes Champions. Now, the Dynamic Duo have teamed in an effort to help green Team GB hockey team and to engage their fans in environmental actions. Our wide-ranging, fast-paced talk delves into their individual journeys to becoming EcoAthletes, their collaboration on the Team GB hockey greening project, and how that can be replicated by environmentally- and climate-minded athletes who […]

The behemoth that is FIFA looks to be ready for Sunday’s kickoff to the 2022 Men’s World Cup, seemingly swatting aside a laundry list of self-inflicted controversies related to the host country of Qatar, including greenwashing charges around organizers’ claims of carbon neutrality (this op-ed from The Guardian is must read on the subject). Why are the Grand Poobahs of world football able to ignore these problems? Because a projected five billion people will watch at least some of the month-long quadrennial ‘festival of futbol’, despite its unfortunate November-December run¹.  Thankfully, like any bloated industry, world soccer is being disrupted by […]

The greening of sports and entertainment venues has been taking place for the better part of the last two decades. Yet two leading lights of the Green-Sports movement, Chris Granger and Kristen Fulmer of Oak View Group, the largest developer and operator of sports and entertainment venues in the world, believe that progress needs to accelerate beyond the tried and true metrics of energy efficiency and waste diversion, to include the broader issues of social impact, climate action, and responsible change. That’s why Granger and Fulmer have teamed up as President of OVG360 (the division of the Oak View Group […]

Brent Suter is a lot of things: Milwaukee Brewers lefty relief pitcher, husband, dad to two young boys, mostly plant-based, EcoAthletes Champion and advisory board member, and Players for the Planet board member. As of today, you can add published children’s book author to his impressive resume as Orange Hat Publishing released the environmentally-themed ‘The Binky Bandit’ in hardcover and paperback. It was illustrated by Jayden Ellsworth. We could not think of a better day to chat with Suter for GreenSportsPod about the book as well as how his environmental and climate activism is being received by his teammates and […]

As some of you may know, a series of close family losses forced me to direct my energies elsewhere over the last month. The kindness of the Green-Sports community, including GreenSportsBlog readers, has been a true blessing and has helped me greatly. Thank you so very much. Now, it is fitting that I get back to blogging and podcasting on Earth Day — a day for both sober reflection as well as a day of hope and action. And with that, I say Happy Earth Day #52! Being “Happy” about the environment, and climate change is a particular challenge these […]

I’ve been wanting to have Claire Poole on GreenSportsPod for a long time. She is the founder and CEO of Sport Positive, convener of the must-attend Sport Positive Summit and the driving force behind the well-regarded and much-covered Sport Positive League sustainability tables. Claire started with the English Premier League in 2019 and added the German Bundesliga in 2021.  Now, Claire has joined the media world with the recent launch of the Climate of Sport podcast. With that being the case, I was thrilled when Claire agreed to have a conversation that would air on Climate of Sport and here […]

Matthew Campelli is founder and editor of The Sustainability Report, which covers the global Green-Sports beat from Europe. He’s also director of sustainability for Touchline, a communications agency specializing in sustainability, sport and reporting. We were catching up not long ago about how the Green-Sports movement can impact the climate fight at this important moment in time: in the wake of August’s devastating IPCC climate report and in the run up to next week’s COP 26 global climate conference. After awhile, one of us blurted out that, “hey, this would be great as a podcast!” So, voilà, here is our […]

I’ve wanted to interview Dr. Katharine Hayhoe on Green Sports Pod for a long time and am thrilled to have her as our guest today. Her résumé is certainly impressive: Chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy Climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University Named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014 EcoAthletes Luminary Author of, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World,” which comes out tomorrow, September 21st, published by Simon & Schuster. Most importantly, Dr. Hayhoe is the best, most powerful climate […]

“The sports industry has been slow to embrace ‘purpose’ as good business,” says Brianna Salvatore-Dueck, retired college and pro basketball player, and EcoAthletes Champion. She is working hard to change that as a senior strategist for 17 Sport — which calls itself the world’s first integrated sports impact company operating at the intersection of sport, business, and purpose. Today’s podcast interview with Salvatore-Dueck delves into her “Sports For Good” background, how data shows conclusively that doing good helps the sports industry do well, and how climate is now an integral part of the Sports-Purpose menu.           Back […]

Searching for someone with whom to have a meaningful, cliché-free podcast discussion as part of GreenSportsBlog’s occasional ‘Sports & Carbon’ series, I looked no further than Dr. Maddy Orr, founder of Sport Ecology Group and a researcher at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Maddy readily agreed and what resulted was a conversation that delved into some thorny issues — like how sports should deal with fossil fuel company sponsors — and then turned into a brainstorm of sorts on ways to accelerate ways the sports world can pick up the pace on decarbonization. Have an idea or two on how the sports […]

  Joanne Pasternack is a Hall of Fame-level connector, an expert at bringing athletes, teams, brands and causes together for good. Her work with the San Francisco 49ers, Golden State Warriors and now Oliver+Rose, her sports philanthropy agency, has resulted in programs that deliver tangible benefits to a myriad of communities. She recently launched Athletes Voices, a program that “empowers elite athletes with personalized playbooks to amplify their voices for change.” In our Earth Week edition of GreenSportsPod, we discuss how: Pasternack’s father inspired her passion for the environment Sports philanthropy was in her blood since childhood Athletes can become […]

Richard Vevers is founder of The Ocean Agency, in his words a “new kind of nonprofit that uses creativity, technology and powerful partnerships to rapidly accelerate” action on ocean conservation. We talked to Vevers late last year about why sports organizations and athletes are becoming an important part of The Ocean Agency’s partnership mix. Enjoy!       Richard Vevers, at the premiere of “Chasing Coral” at 2017 Sundance Film Festival (Photo credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images North America)   More regarding GreenSportsPod: Click SUBSCRIBE on the podcast player above to ensure that you hear every new episode. That will allow […]

Elizabeth Beisel brings an infectious joie de vivre to everything she does. And she does a lot. Two-time Olympic medal-winning swimmer. Up and coming sportscaster. Advocate for clean, thriving oceans. Aspiring climate activist. We cover all of the above in today’s GreenSportsPod, as well as how Beisel has begun to use her platform to speak out on climate.       Back to GreenSportsPod: Click SUBSCRIBE on the podcast player above to ensure that you hear every new episode. That will allow you to then listen to GSP on your favorite podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Pocket Casts). All GSP episodes are archived […]

I knew going into my podcast interview with Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval, recorded in August, that the club is planning to build a new downtown ballpark that will be on the vanguard of green sports venues. What I did not know is that Kaval has a deep understanding of the intersectional racial, social and climate injustice issues plaguing Oakland and has committed the organization to do what it can to turn things around. Today’s GreenSportsPod episode delves into those topics as well as the remarkable story of how Kaval got to the A’s in the first place. I hope you […]

Environmental justice, the disproportionate exposure of communities of color and the poor to the harmful impacts of pollution, had not gotten much oxygen in the sports world, until a groundbreaking panel discussion on the topic at the 2019 Green Sports Alliance Summit in Philadelphia. Kunal Merchant, an expert on environmental justice and the head of Lotus Advisory, a consulting firm that helps clients — including sports teams and venues — pursue transformative change, moderated. Today, we pick up this very important conversation with Kunal in Episode 9 of GreenSportsPod. He pushes the sports industry — and the Green-Sports niche within […]

The eighth episode of GreenSportsPod is a first in that we have two interviews for your listening, and hopefully learning pleasure.  Leading off is Maggie Badore, web director/writer/reporter for “The Years Project,” the excellent online video documentary series about the impacts of climate change happening now. Among other things, we talk about how sports content has fared on “Years”. Next up is Kevin Wilhelm, the sustainability consultant with an impressive sports practice. But Green-Sports takes a back seat to politics as we discussed Wilhelm’s — and co-author Natalie Hoffman’s — new book, “How To Talk to the Other Side: Finding […]

Protect Our Winters (POW) has been a Green-Sports beacon for the past decade, educating world class and Olympic medal-winning skiers, snowboarders, trail runners, and more about climate change. From the nonprofit’s early days until today, those POW Athlete Ambassadors lobby Members of Congress and snow state legislators on behalf of climate-friendly legislation. Today’s guest, Mario Molina, became POW’s Executive Director in 2017. Under his leadership, the organization is working to coalesce and unleash the political power of “The Outdoor State,” the 50 million Americans who enjoy snow and adventure sports, to impact the 2020 U.S. elections in favor of candidates, […]