FREE KICKS - Football Relies on EMAS and ECOLABEL to Keep Innovating on Circularity as a Key for Sustainability
▶Summary
The football sector inertia on climate change and environmental sustainability calls for far-reaching action to boost relevant changes to meet the objectives of the Green Deal. The popularity of football makes this sport an ideal vector of change and a leverage for the social acceptance of climate-resilient and environment-friendly lifestyles among EU citizens. FREE KICKS triggers the transition of the football scene towards the goals of the Green Deal at collective and individual levels, by supporting 1) the uptake of leading-edge environmental management practices and sustainable organizational models among national football associations and professional clubs, and 2) climate-conscious and environment-friendly behavioural patterns among football organizations. FREE KICKS tests transformational governance through the diffusion and the adoption of EU management tools such as EMAS, EU Ecolabel, PEF/OEF to trigger football organizations systemic change in line with Green Deal. FREE KICKS, with the support of UEFA and ECA, targets 5 professional football organizations in 4 partner countries and 1 associated country to devise governance and operational solutions that are suitable to a large audience of sport organizations. By engaging a club outside Europe, FREE KICKS aims at understanding similarities and differences in terms of environmental impact. FREE KICKS advances a transdisciplinary approach to innovation, merging expertise from a highly diverse consortium of researchers and practitioners. FREE KICKS will prompt the adoption of EU tools and aims at spreading sustainable pilot measures and management actions to reduce the environmental pressures generated by the football world. FREE KICKS aims to underline how sport can promote a greener, low-carbon Europe using both an operational-based approach, developed by the improvement of best practice examples and a political approach, through a panel with high-level EU policymakers and sports representatives such as ECA.