Sports: When sustainability changes the game.

ACR+ continues to enrich its ‘circular lifestyles’ portfolio with a new project aligning sustainability strategies of sports organisations with those of local and regional authorities.

ACCESS stands for “Achieving Circular Cities through the Environmental Sustainability of Sports”. Funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, the project aims at developing environmental management in sports organisations, running until 2025. After successful implementation, these organisations can significantly contribute to local and regional authorities’ circular economy strategies and targets. Furthermore, ACCESS will help them passing on their experiences to similar organisations. 

While many European cities and regions have adopted environmental sustainability strategies guided by EU policies and frameworks, their successful implementation in sports has so far been rather limited. Therefore, ACCESS aims at improving sports events’ environmental performances by turning to green mobility and decreasing waste production, resource consumption and the events’ carbon footprint. In order to achieve this, sports organisations must address various operational and governance principles.

To carry out ACCESS, ACR+ joined forces with its member, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. Together they will coach four sports organisations through the project: the Danish Football Association, FC Porto, the Football Association of Wales, and the Gaelic Athletic Association, as well as their cities and regions as indirect beneficiaries.

Next steps

ACR+ and Sant’Anna School are currently assessing the sport organisations’ performances, practices, and capacities to identify hotspots and opportunities for improvements in their environmental management.

Once this assessment is finished, the project will publish a report on organisations’ circular economy governance and operational needs. It will be complemented with a tool to measure the level of circularity in sports organisations. The project will then set up four Circular Cities Committees to bring all relevant stakeholders together and strive towards harmonious and inclusive transformation. By 2026, ACCESS will make sure that sports organisations are leaders in sustainability practices.

Get involved

Do you want to learn how to expand your sustainability or circular economy strategy to the sports and event sector? Do you want to collaborate better with sports entities on your territory? Do you want to know more about environmental management in sports organisations? Or have you simply become curious about ACCESS? The ball is in your court!

Follow the project on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and subscribe to its newsletter to be informed of the next developments and opportunities to get involved!

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Contact: 

For more information, please write to contact@access-cc.eu