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In Indigenous cultures, the state of the environment is highly valued as it is often regarded as interconnected with human health. Poor environmental conditions, as seen today, is negatively impacting occupational participation, which is participation in everyday activities, for indigenous peoples. Because of this, indigenous peoples are limited in what physical activities or sports they can participate in.

A study of professional athletes’ willingness to pay for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions reveals a promising intersection between sports participation and environmental sustainability efforts with a majority of participants showing readiness to financially support green initiatives. Key strategies include raising environmental awareness, demonstrating event sustainability, leveraging social influence, and collaborating with environmental organizations. These strategies may also attract eco-conscious participants, underlining the critical role sports can play in promoting environmental stewardship!

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2018) has recorded rising temperatures throughout the world. Extreme heat events are causing risks to workers’ health, organizational productivity and infrastructure and the sport sector is being forced to adapt (Glasser, 2020; Heal & Park, 2016).

For example, the 2022 Manitoba Marathon was cancelled mid-race, with runners already on the course, due to extreme heat (Strachan and Van Winkle, 2022). Many marathons face similar concerns, including during the Tokyo Olympics when organizers had to move the marathon start to an earlier time to reduce heat impacts. It’s not just distance running events that are a risk though, for example, the U.S. Open has instituted a rule that in times of extreme heat, tennis players must be given a 10-minute recovery break between the second and third sets (Taylor, 2019).

As temperatures continue to rise and extreme heat becomes a recurring phenomenon, sport needs to continue to adapt to the climate challenges. An inadequate response leaves sport at risk of adverse heat impacts. These impacts can include athlete heat stroke and, potentially, decision-making impairment by referees (Gaoua et coll., 2017). Additionally, extreme temperatures can increase the temperatures felt while on artificial fields (Abraham, 2019), and can compact grass-based fields resulting in an increase in injuries (Dingle & Stewart, 2018). Brookes (2023) has even noted that future extreme heat impacts could effectively make certain sport events “unplayable,” including the Australian Tennis Open and the cycling Tour Down Under.

In this blog, we summarize the findings of our recent study, which focused on a university athletics department in Canada’s response to extreme heat conditions for outdoor sports. Based on our research, we offer recommendations for athletic departments and sport organizations working to ensure sport safety amid extreme heat events.

The research process and results

We surveyed anonymous participants at a university in Canada (including athletes and administrators involved in sport) about their experiences concerning extreme heat and sport. A report was compiled based on the findings, and then shared back with participants for further comment. The resulting manuscript outlined the impact of heat on athletes, game officials and sports fields during outdoor activities (Mallen, Dingle and McRoberts, 2023).

Overall, the study revealed that the athletic department at the surveyed institution was responding to extreme heat time periods with a hot weather plan. The plan involved required risk assessments during times of extreme heat, along with risk reduction actions. However, the study also showed that more could be done to protect outdoor sport participants in the case of extreme heat events.

For example, the athletic department made water stations available throughout any outdoor sport event it hosted. However, the study identified that even more stations are required for easy access by athletes, along with water stations with easy access for game officials. Shade options are also currently made available for varsity events but, again, more are necessary. Likewise, moving practices and games to cooler times of the day during extreme heat events is happening, but participants do not have access to the data used in the decision-making to determine when the move is to occur or not. 

Participants surveyed in this study proposed additional adaptation strategies for safe participation in university athletics, including:

Further, the researchers propose that those in athletic departments consider the use of alternative surfaces to manage a changing climate. Grass-based fields get compacted and utilize critical water resources during extreme heat conditions, and artificial turf can get dangerously hot. There may be a time when alternative surfaces are needed for practices and games in times of extreme heat. Remember that sports such as tennis and volleyball are already played on multiple surfaces. It is time for other sports to consider such a transition to manage extreme heat conditions. The time is now to begin exploratory use of alternative surfaces for continuing sport during times of extreme heat.

Final thoughts

Extreme heat is a challenge for varsity sport. Researchers and practitioners need to work together to understand the impacts and best practices concerning responses. This collaboration is needed now to ensure the safety of the participants, officials, facilities and organizational infrastructure.

The international sport sector, including Canadian sport, needs to work urgently towards the elimination of plastics. At present, sport facilities are significant producers of plastic waste, particularly from food and beverage services.

Action on the part of the sport sector is necessary because these plastic products are entering our waterways. Plastic waste gets into waterways by being dumped or blown by the wind into our sewage systems, streams, rivers, lakes, eventually migrating into our oceans (Shuyler et coll., 2018). The United Nations has been calling for the mitigation of plastics in our waterways over the past few decades (Brundtland Report, 1987). Action is needed.

Sport organizations have the capacity to put necessary pressure on our sport facilities to eliminate the use of plastics, as well as our community organizations and companies. Sport has influence that reaches deep within communities and has the communication capability to reach a multitude of individuals and groups.

In some cases, sport is already working to eliminate plastics, but sporadically. We need a consistent approach that pushes for bioplastic alternatives at every turn, as well as the cleaning of our waterways from plastics and the re-utilization of such plastic through recycling.

In this blog I will give a sense of the status of plastic-reduction in the Canadian sport sector and overview the harm that plastic pollution causes to the environment.

Where our plastic goes

Imagine you’re at a summer baseball game at a large sport complex. You’re not allowed to bring a reusable bottle into the facility for security reasons, so you purchase an expensive bottle of water at the concession stand. At the end of the game, you toss the empty bottle into a recycling container and think nothing more of it.

However, that bottle (or food wrapper, or other piece of single use plastic), even if you disposed of it responsibly, may end up being blown or dumped elsewhere and end up in our waterways. Once it’s there, the sun heats the plastic and breaks it down into microparticles. Marine life eats the plastic because nutrients collect on the surface of the plastic microparticles, so they smell and look like food (Carbery et coll., 2018). This leads to bioaccumulation, or a build-up of plastics in the digestive system of marine life.

Additionally, the plastic absorbs the heat from the sun, and this amplifies the warming of the waterways and the air (Royer et coll., 2018). Warmer waterways can lead to bacterial issues. Extreme temperature events intensify the situation.

As the plastics breakdown, gases and toxins are released into the water (such as flame retardants) (Teuten et coll., 2007). These toxins are, thus, in our water resources. The very waterways that we rely on for our drinking water. Currently, municipal water management systems have not found to be able to effectively filter the full complement of micro-particulates out of the water (Gaied et coll., 2017; Mason et coll., 2016). The result is that, along with marine life, we are ingesting the microparticles of the plastics we use in our daily life.

How facility managers perceive plastic waste reduction efforts

In a recent study my colleague and I conducted, sport facility managers within the Canadian Hockey League indicated that they are not currently working towards ensuring plastics-free concessions due to lack of pressure from the patrons (Watkin and Mallen, 2021). Further, it was noted that many facility managers have contracts with suppliers and do not want to (or cannot, due to the contractual arrangements) work with other suppliers that offer plastic alternatives. Some facility managers noted that the bottling companies are working to reduce the use of virgin plastic in their production and to introduce partially compostable bottles. Some managers indicated that the mitigation and management of plastics is simply not their role at a sport facility.

Currently, these managers are guided by their local municipal mandates. Many of these mandates require recycling but do not require the elimination of plastics used at the sport facilities. Every participant in the study responded that they were aware of plastic alternatives. Further, the sport facility managers stated that they had permission to switch to biodegradable alternatives should they chose to do so. They did not need further permissions to make such purchases, but contractual and budget constraints were noted as barriers.

There is limited research to guide sport facility managers to successfully move forward in sport and water management. There is research regarding an Australian sport and water management program along with a suggested research agenda (Kellett et Turner, 2011) and a case study concerning the Australian case of water and sport for students to consider (Phillips et Turner, 2014). There is also research outlining the water and plastic issue on the shoreline and in open water in the local Great Lakes (Driedger, Durr, Mitchell, et Van Cappellen, 2015), but sport has largely ignored the issue.

Plastics alternatives

We have alternatives to plastics. Examples include bioplastic wrap and bags made from renewable biological products, compostable cups along with cutlery made of corn starch resin. Another example includes water pods that consist of algae wrapped edible water pods that have been used at marathon races to eliminate the use of bottles and cups. Athletes at the 2018 Harrow half-marathon and 2019 London Marathon were given the pods at the start of the race and at the hydration stations along the route. There are still issues to be worked out concerning some of the alternatives, such as distributing water pods and keeping them clean until use, but human ingenuity can make it work.

Final thoughts

Sport is not exempt from doing their part to mitigate the critical issue of plastics in our waterways. No matter your role in the sport sector, be it athlete, parent, coach, administrator or other, you can help by putting pressure on your local sporting facilities to consider plastic alternatives.