Bulldog Sustainability is currently assisting both men’s and women’s varsity basketball teams to pilot Green Athletic Team Certification. Green Athletic Team Certification was developed by Erin Carter (ES ’12 and captain of the Women’s Field Hockey team) and designed as a nonobligatory tool for teams to become more sustainable in their everyday behaviors on and off the field. The certification has seven main action areas – Transportation & Travel, Paper, Energy, Food, Water, Community Engagement, and Innovation – with various goals in each action area, ranging from donating “old, re-usable equipment to local high school or youth programs” to unplugging “electronics when exiting the locker room,” for varsity sports teams to complete. Green Athletic Team certification was modeled off Yale Office of Sustainability’s Green Workplace Certification and Green event Certification.
Bulldog Sustainability Unveils Green Athletic Team Certification
January 30, 2012
In order to become certified as a “green team,” a team must fulfill 15 of 25 goals. Prizes, such as t-shirts and food, will be awarded to teams that complete certification. The certification process focuses on involving the entire team to complete the challenge. Each of the 25 action items in the guidelines has a responsibility section, where the team must indicate who is leading the specific effort, in the hopes of making the certification process truly a team effort.
Michelle Cashen (CC ’12 and captain of the Women’s Basketball team), a member of the Bulldog Sustainability team, and Jerermiah Kreisberg are working in conjunction with Carter to help the women’s and men’s basketball teams to obtain “green team” status. After working with these two teams, Bulldog Sustainability hopes to certify a total of ten varsity teams as “green teams” before the end of the academic year.