Status: COMPLETED June 2018 - October 2019
The Sustainable Athletics Intern project seeks to implement the recently-drafted Athletics & Recreation Climate and Sustainability Action Plan through the hiring of an employee responsible for integrating sustainability into the day-to-day operations of the unit.
Read the full project description
As a first step to increasing the sustainability capacity of McGill Athletics, the unit participated in a course on sustainability consulting as a client. The output of this consultation was the newly created Athletics & Recreation Climate and Sustainability Action Plan. The proposed actions are:
- Decrease use of single-use plastic water bottles
- Increase waste diversion at facilities and games,
- Create outdoor exercise space
- Create varsity travel data tracking system
- Improve fleet efficiency when possible
- Achieve sustainable events certification at games
- Continue using renovations as an opportunity to improve the efficiency of building operations
- Implement an educational and awareness campaign through social media, orientation information, and targeted information on the relationship between exercise and mental health.
Unfortunately, the unit does not currently have the resources to fully initiate the plan. In order to address this critically important yet under-resourced plan, the department will hire an intern with a strong background in sustainability who also understands the athletics context at McGill. This intern would be a part-time employee throughout the 2018-2019 academic school year to run outreach initiatives (#1, 2, 8), lay the ground work for complex action items (#1-4), achieve a sustainable events certification for games and events, and generally begin fostering a culture of sustainability at athletics. During summer 2019 they would work full time to continue their implementation, focusing on ensuring institutionalization of the action plan. This intern will be an employee of A&R, but will work closely with the McGill Office of Sustainability (MOOS) to foster a stronger relationship between the two departments. The ambition for the project is that this intern will act as the much needed link between our operations and sustainability culture on campus during this dynamic period.
Resources from the SPF will be used to compensate the intern throughout the duration of the project.
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Contact
angelo.battista [at] mcgill.ca (Angelo Battista)
