“It’s tremendously important to recognise our own responsibility for the future of Europe. In order to face global issues, we have to learn from, collaborate with and support each other.” ISCA member BG Be Active emphasised at the kick-off meeting of their new Erasmus+ Sport project, Sport Without Waste, that the grassroots sport and physical activity sector can make an important contribution to environmental sustainability by discovering new ways to organise their events that minimise or eliminate the amount of waste they create. Representatives of eight partner organisations, including ISCA, took part in the kick-off meeting on 20-22 July 2022 in Sofia.

The three days of the meeting were filled with various sessions in which the partners got to know each other and shared their experiences in litter prevention activities connected to sport.

The partners were also introduced to Bulgarian NGOs and eco-movements working in the fields of placemaking and litter prevention, community activation and physical activity. The partners from Power Jump (Varna), Safe Playgrounds (Sofia), and Beyond Sport (Sofia) shared with the participants their own insights into combining grassroots sports, minimising waste and community engagement.

For the project meeting, BG Be Active invited its national partner EcoPack Bulgaria that has supported cultural and sport events with recycling infrastructure Iva Stefanova presented good practices in Bulgaria, shared challenges in collecting waste and presented the learnings of working with different stakeholders. The national Bulgarian television channel presented by Stasi Tsalova (bTV) joined the meeting to discuss their national campaign “Let’s Clean Bulgaria”.

The partners also discussed the future activities of the project, planned the next steps, and presented each other’s challenges for sustainable practices in grassroots sport in their countries. The partners went into detail on research of the local contexts, behaviour-changing strategies and the project methodology, led by the expert partners from International Sport and Culture Association (Denmark), and Nabolagshager (Norway). As a follow-up to the meeting, the partners will study further their local contexts, plan pilot interventions for grassroots sport sustainable events, and reflect on advocacy for the project.

The Sport #WithoutWaste project’s overarching objective is to start a #WithoutWaste for leisure and sport movement in the participating countries through the fields of sport, leisure, physical activity, and community involvement, and by using placemaking and tactical urbanism tools, the project seeks to transfer knowledge from BG Be Active and already conducted initiatives in Bulgaria and use it to build the capacity of partnering organisations to coordinate without waste grassroots sporting events.

Sport #WithoutWaste is therefore a movement that was initiated by BG Be Active and is now being supported by the efforts of the partner organisations from 7 other European countries: International Sport and Culture Association (Denmark), Nabolagshager (Norway), AJSPT Suceava (Romania), Hungarian School Sport Federation (Hungary), Albanian School Sport Federation / FSHSSH (Albania), Association Sport for All Serbia / ASFAS (Serbia), and Envercevko (Turkey). 

BG Be Active aspires to transfer, adapt and scale the tested national practices on having cities and events #WithoutWaste from Bulgaria, to the partnering countries with focus on the grassroots sports sector (event organisers, sport clubs, schools etc.). We want to thank again all the partners of the project for being active and contributing to the project’s discussions.

If you are interested in helping us with the implementation of Sport Without Waste initiatives, how to take part in our activities or have any questions related to topic, please, don’t hesitate to reach out BG Be Active https://www.bgbeactive.org/

Read the original story on the official website here

Sport #WithoutWaste is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EACEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.