Joanna Czutkowna, Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University, joins Experts in Sport host Martin Foster to discuss sustainability of the fashion and sport industries and the big problems that future generations will potentially face as a result of waste.
Time Stamps:
0.00-2.30 – Introduction to guest & work
2.31-5.32 – Overview of sustainability
5.33-6.54 – Issues within the fashion industry
6.55-8.54 – Charity shops, markets and clothing waste
8.55-13.20 – Sports industry’s contribution
13.21-16.51 – UEFA leading the way
16.52-21.45 – Scope 3 emissions
21.46-24.09 – What are the most sustainable materials?
24.10-26.15 – Circular business models
26.16-28.28 – Grassroots sport
28.29-33.50 – Culture of repair & the modern education system
33.51-37.00 – Neurodiversity’s part in sustainability
37.01-39.26 – Cricket kitting out
39.27-44.52 – Fans & participants facilitating change
44.53-45.28 – Outro & goodbyes
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Welcome to the experts in sport podcast brought to you by the school of sports exercise and Health Sciences at lury University so today I’m with Joe jakova consultant doctoral researcher specializing in circularity within sports apparel and today we’re going to talk about sustainability with a focus
On Sports kit so hi Joe thanks for coming on the podcast thank you for having me no problem we are on our second recording today because something went wrong so I hugely appreciate coming back on so we won’t lie to anybody this is the second go so it should be perfect
Today fingers crossed that’s what we’re hoping we’re hoping so so can you provide our listeners with a bit of a background to yourself before we start y so my background is in fashion so I always feel like a bit of an imposter the fashion girl that’s entered
Into sport um but I’ve spent 20 years in the fashion industry 10 years based out in China really working on Innovation on procurement everything from the design process all the way through to manufacturer and retailing and very much on the ground in factories seeing what it’s like
Um so yeah I’ve kind of taken that experience and we know that there’s a lot of problems in terms of the fashion space but a lot of those carry over into sport because the amount of apparel that’s in sport um so that’s what I do
Now within my consultancy so I am CEO of five thread and we help Fashion sports and education sectors to really change the game and what they’re doing and at the same time you you are studying you’re doing a PhD I am also doing a PhD yeah in circularity and uh football shirts
Mainly because there’s just so much scope within Sports to look at this and look at circular economy and really change the game as saying how we’re doing things and look at those circular economy business models like rental resale um digital experiences brilliant thank you I’m sure we’re going toar hear
Some great things about fashion and about sport um we’ve done a number of podcasts in the past where we’ve talked about you know the issues that um are caused by climate change on Sport and the impact that sport is having on climate change so we’re not going to dig
Into many of those but I did think it’d be interesting to just talk a little bit about sustainability because all the podcasts we’ve spoken about are really about environmental sustainability and and here we’re touching on a little bit more than just environmental I say just you know that’s that’s probably a bad term
To use but we’re talking I in the broader sense so can you can you just give us a a bit of a brief background into your understanding of sustainability um yes well I’m laughing about this because um in my PhD you know we have to Define what sustainability is
And so I’ve been on quite a journey with this and there’s over 300 definitions around what sustainability is and you know the long and short of it is it’s an oxymoron you know it means so many different things and to be honest it’s it lacks true meaning anymore but for me
Personally I was think of it in terms of the three pillars which which is people planet and profit so social you know are we ethical and fair in how we treat our supply chains for example economic can you afford to continue running your business and environmental so you know
We have to be realistic that those three pillars don’t exist in isolation and they can be in conflict with each other you know and it’s really interesting I know we were doing a lecture last week when we asked you know what should be a company’s priority is it environmental
Or is it economic you know and there’s quite split there and I would say a lot of companies still prioritize economic sustainability over environmental and I think even less companies look at Social sustainability so I think it’s quite complex I think it’s surrounded by greenwashing now to a customer
Sustainability has so many different meanings so to me I kind of look about the circular economy and certain different Frameworks in terms of how can we practically take these ideas forward and the people Planet profit side of things has been around for a little while now and it does seem like people
Are starting to think about all three of those now whereas before and there’s probably still many there are profit was first in in a lot of people’s thinking um it’d be interesting to see how that may change and I know you briefly mentioned it in in the leure delivered
For me recently but I think I think it’s in the UEFA reports that that I’ve seen recently talking about I’ve always found this strange that everybody just talks about growth and continuous growth and continuously more and continuously more profit and I think there’s a quote in there somewhere that’s says anybody who
Thinks you can just continue to grow and have more more more on a planet with limited resources is I think it says something like is either deranged or an economist I think is what it says which I find quite funny but I think that’s that needs to start to change mindsets
Around things and I think I want to really set the scene there around people Planet profit because I think it really opens up the conversation that we’re going to have so thank you for that yeah I mean I would just say exactly I think we are living in a cost of living crisis
And there’s a lot of brands that are just focused now on increased profits and driving growth you know if you look at Nike they grew 1% they didn’t feel that growth was strong enough and they’ve cut almost half their Workforce but like you say from that quote it is
Ridiculous to think that we continue in this way and it’s not going to cause problems for the climate so how can we look at different models compared to this linear business model that we’re on and actually look at circular economy business models so that’s kind of what
I’m quite passionate about because I do think there needs to significant change in the way that we do things definitely so to get us going in terms of this can you talk us through the fashion industry and kind of the problems there we’ve all heard problems but can you highlight
Them to us yeah I mean I feel like where do we start with this it’s the fourth most damaging sector you know not just for emissions but also for things like chemicals and water Global textile production doubled between 201 and 2015 so we’re making more clothes but we’re
Using them for almost half as long the amount of time that we’ve we wear our clothes has decreased by 36% in the last 15 years you know only 1% of clothing is actually recycled into new clothing so there’s a myth about you know we’re going to recycle our way out of this the
Recycling infrastructure isn’t scaled at the moment to be able to facilitate it and 73% of materials are sent to landfill or incinerated at the end of life so there’s massive problems within the fast fashion space that are only continuing to get worse as we kind of perpetuate this business model of
Selling more at lower prices yeah and we’re all probably guilty of taking on more and more clothes and cheap clothes and and not recycling but the interesting point there is around as well as giving things to charity and trying to recycle because we probably think we’re doing things for the better
For everybody and we are to an extent but can you give us some information around that in terms of Charity shops because I know we mentioned this before yeah so only about 30% of what we give to charity actually gets sold in that charity shop and it actually costs the
Charity shop quite a lot of money to sort through all of the garments that we give them because so many of them are waste but what tends to happen is that the 70% that are not sold in that store basically is sorted then and graded by quality and then they are then shipped
To secondary markets one of the biggest markets is in Ghana uh called kantamanto Market 50 million items are received by that market every week and about 40% you know figures vary but about 40% of everything that they receive is waste and so what happens when a Trader kind
Of goes to buy that stock is it’s all bailed up so they only buy a closed bail they can’t see what’s inside of it and then they open it up and 40% of that bail they might not be able to use and so they have to pay to discard that and
We’re getting to a point where the landfills are full the waterways are contaminated but we continue to still produce very fast fashion and use this as a way of disposal but actually there’s a lot of people who were just saying that this is waste colonialism now and we’re also finding problems with
Things like illegal dumping so in Chile there were 39,000 tons of clothing dumped in the desert because if they took them over the Border they would have to pay the tariffs now it’s about 60,000 tons and it’s so big that you can see it from space so we’re literally
Kind of running out of places to to put this product now you know there is no away for it because most of it is made from polyester it doesn’t biodegrade you know it can be harmful when it’s burned so it’s a huge issue but because it’s
Kind of out of sight out of mind and we’re shipping it abroad we’re not really feeling the repercussions essentially in this country and when you you mentioned this to me before so I obviously had to go and Google it and you know anybody listening now go go and
Google the um Chile you you can you can see the pictures of where this has been dumped in in the desert so it was astonishing to me when I when I first heard that so I really wanted to touch upon that again now how is the sports industry contributing contributing to
This I know you mentioned your you’ve mentioned to me you’re you’re the you’re the fashion girl who’s now in the sports industry and I think there’s a reason you’ve moved to research this industry specifically so can you give us some of that why did you research back into this
Industry and how is it impacting yeah I mean to me it was very unexpected as phds do um it went from looking at kind of digital Supply chains into Cricket initially and I kind of realized how much kitten equipment is used in sports and how underutilized that is and so
From that I’ve just become fascinated with it because when we’ve looked at the stats for example if we take football 60% of professional football kit is never used and is actually just destroyed even before it’s ever worn so if you think about that from an environmental and economic point of view
It just doesn’t make any sense and then if you put some values to that you know that’s about 1.5 to 3.5 million items per season you know which is massive and financially it’s about 108 million EUR which is being lost and basically set on fire each season and that’s equivalent to transfer fees
Of somebody like Jude Bellingham so there’s huge issues in sports um football fascinates me particularly because it’s the idea of having this garment that is so interconnected with a club the history and Heritage of a club it’s got huge emotional value you have such unique experiences wearing that
Shirt but then also the club releases a new kit every season so the shelf life of that shirt is about 10 months now and it’s not just one shirt it’s your home away in third kit and now you have things like special editions so there’s more and more kind of inventory being
Added to the retail arm of this and we’re seeing more kind of fashion and sports collaborations so Reese recently partnered with McLaren and they released a range and we’re seeing more things like that we’re seeing athletes becoming ambassadors for the luxury brands for example and that is just facilitating um
This idea of more and more consumption and more growth within a for sports let me just jump on a couple of things you said there so you talked about the planet and we’re talking about profit and I know you’re really Keen to get this message across that actually you
Can still be profitable through through a circular business model um and stopping this waste so there’s there’s a big incentive on the profit side to do this but one of the things that stood out when I’ve when I’ve spoke to you about this before and you said there it
Gets incinerated I had assumed that it’s the same thing as you mentioned in Africa and other place that we just send it away and pretend it’s not our problem but it doesn’t just get sent away some of this is incinerated in this country as well isn’t it yeah and it’s quite a
Normal practice you know and some people would argue it’s a circular practice because you’re extracting energy from burning that waste I think there’s parts of Sweden that basically run on the burning of clothes one of the retailers basically disposes of in that way so it’s a massive problem but the reason
Why it’s done is to protect the linear business model because if you have all all of this excess stock and you can’t do anything with it you need to get rid of it otherwise it will devalue that brand and the interesting thing is that the EU has become very strong on this so
There’s the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles and they are proposing a ban on the destruction of unsold Goods so it’s going to be really interesting to see how clubs and Brands adapt to that you know if you can’t now burn your stock what are you going to do
With it so I’m really interested to see how they adapt and there are circular business models that can support you with this so if we look at upcycling for example there’s a company called fc8 they will take the product and they’ll retain the value of that product so it
Could be the badge for example and they will turn it into a unique item you know they might turn it into a laptop sleeve or a rock Sack or something like that but they will cut around things like outdated sponsors so that the embargos that some of the brands have on reuse
Don’t exist because they’ll only use parts of the shirt that they can sell so I think it is about being commercial you know I started life off as a buyer and I’m very much in favor that people need to have economic sustainability but I think there are ways that you can do
This that don’t have such a damaging impact on the planet and there’s there’s lots of us who can be involved in making a difference here and I think we’re going to talk through that a little bit now so you mentioned governments and legislations coming in but what are what
Are you wafer doing you waer have been quite Forward Thinking really what they’re doing so could you talk us through a little bit of your wafer and specifically around the kits and what they’re doing y so so last year UEFA released their uh circular economy guidelines for Apparel in my opinion
They were a leader in the space because one of the first ones to actually address that conflict of interest in apparel and kit the football apparel sector is worth 113.5 billion now UEFA within their circular economy guidelines suggested a for our hierarchy in terms of reduce
Reuse and recycle and then recover so to actually to go out to their 55 National associations and suggest that we actually start to reduce the amount of Kit and apparel that we have in our ranges I think was a really bold step and within those guidelines they have a
Range of different suggestions in terms of cost levels and complexities where clubs can kind of meet them where they’re at so rather than having to invest in quite costly Solutions there’s some quite easy things that clubs can start to implement and I think that’s really important that we all start to
Kind of make changes where wherever we can and one of the big things you know one of the examples was brenford is that they just didn’t release a kit for one season you know they missed a home season kit launch and the reason why they did that was mainly because of the
Cost of living crisis they said we didn’t want to put that pressure on fans you know we felt like fans should have more longevity from that shirt and the byproduct was sustainability and I think that’s a brilliant way to deliver the message you know it doesn’t always have
To be the environmental good it can be for economic reasons it’s I mean it’s a good example with that life cycle I think from what I just read earlier they they’ve now got nine RS from what I saw and I saw that the first one was refuse which I thought was quite interesting
They talking from a perspective of you know refuse items because manufacturers are doing x y and Zed or are they talking about fans refusing to buy things what what was their message there with the refuse element yeah I mean within the circular economy there is a NR hierarchy UEFA decided to use four
You know to make it easier for stakeholders to understand but the first one is of course refuse and for me just as a as somebody who engages with sport it’s things like if you’re going to do a race just refuse to have a race t-shirt unless you’re going to really wear it
And love it and get a lot of emotional value from it just refuse that you know there’s a lot of kit that we give away there’s a lot of excess kit out there that nobody’s asked for but you just kind of get by default and I think one
Of the key things is you can just start to kind of say no to that and I think that’s a big thing especially with merchandise and branding and sponsorship there’s a lot of sponsors who will want to give things away you know everybody loves the freebie but I think it’s about
Actually saying let’s stop you know let’s really consider if that’s the right thing to do and if we are going to do that let’s think about how we’re going to design it so it can be taken back it can be reused and that it’s just not a single use plastic item that is
Given out to hundreds of thousands of fans for example so a lot of it is just about really considering the product that we put out there and thinking is there a smarter way to do this the circular economy is really about how do we decouple growth from finite resources
Digital is a way that you could do that for example so I think if we look at how we can do it and lean into that there are a lot of innovative solutions that we can consider and in terms of clubs it’s interesting for them and their understanding they’re obviously on this
Start of this journey really and I know people talk about scope one scope two scope three emissions I wonder if we you could just touch up on what they are and how clubs might start to become a bit more aware of scope three emissions because this might turn into something
Where they start refusing to to work with brands or work with manufacturers and put the pressure on from that way exactly so your scope one emissions are your direct emissions which are kind of owned and controlled by user company your scope two and three are almost like
Indirect emissions scope two are I would say easier to Monitor and to collect because they’re kind of purchase from things like your electricity things like that whereas scope three is essentially the emission cause throughout your supply chain they’re indirect emissions and so I think it was Man City who was
Saying about 87% of their emissions are from scope 3 now scope 3 is really difficult to manage and to collect because for example if you have kit that is made in China you need to understand what does that factory power they’re manufacturing with is it a renewable
Energy is it coal for example which Factory is it made in where is the fiber coming from where is the fabric being manufactured so you need to have such transparency through that supply chain to be able to quantify those emissions within scope three and you know we’ve talked about complex Supply chains
Before I don’t think that’s always the case that you can achieve there but I think it’s really about leaning into Partnerships with your suppliers and understanding how can we measure and monitor our emissions together almost and incentivizing them in terms of why it’s important especially when you’re dealing with Global Supply chains yeah
It does sound very difficult to do I think from what I could perceive it seemed like well scope one we we understand that and we can measure that so scope three historically was like we don’t know about that so we don’t take much notice whereas now it seems like
We’re starting to actually open our eyes a little bit and and and make some changes happen do you think that’s coming from the some legislation that’s you know further down the line that may be coming are people getting ahead of the curve I hope so I think it’s coming
From Sports greater awareness of its role within climate change you know Sports part of the solution but part of the problem and it has more eyes on it than ever before so I think it is having to step up to that responsibility in regards to apparel I think it will be
Driven by legislation you know I think there are some fashion retailers who have really future proof themselves but it’s an onlevel playing field at the moment because the legislation is not yet enforced whereas I think when that does come into force over the next couple of years they will have to
Consider things like EX extended producer responsibility so taking responsibility for the full life cycle of that product they’ll have to look at things like ecodesign so making better products you know that could be repaired or recycled or that are more durable for example and having an understanding of
Your supply base and how products are made and where the emissions fall and how you can monitor and reduce those emissions is fundamental so I think it will come as things like data collection become better and better and I know ufer released their carbon footprint calculator the other week tools like
That will help clubs be able to track more accurately but I think it’s also that relationship between club brand and manufacturer that needs to be strengthened because at the moment it is very opaque clubs don’t necessarily know where their product is made and then you
Know only this week I think it was FC Barcelona actually talked about making their own kit you know maybe we should cut Nike out of this process and actually manufacture our own kit in Spain so there’s also a lot of changes there in terms of where does the
Responsibility lie you know at the moment the club essentially buys the product from the brand but could the club actually become a manufacturer and I think legislation is interesting because when you talk about extended producer responsibility the hus there is on I guess the producer you know but who
Is that producer is it the club is it the brand is it the manufacturer so those responsibilities I don’t think are clear at at the moment neither are the repercussions that’s a really interesting interesting question with so many so many parts to it like talking about the the life cycle firstly who
Owns that life cycle is really interesting I was thinking there if Barcelona produced their own kit my first thought was how are they going to distribute that around the world Nike would distribute things much more easily than Barcelona in my head and then I started thinking about this life cycle
And who owns it and who understands it I suppose so I think those early parts of sustainability and thinking about things everybody start thinking we’ll package in oh it’s coming loads of plastic let’s stop that people have then started to think about distribution a little bit oh
Traveling or you know has it been flown or those kind of areas but that’s only a small part really of that of that life cycle so raw materials where where has this come from um we could touch upon this so in terms of what kits are made
From what is a good solution because is it should should everything be made from cotton you know what’s the what’s the issues with polyester so what are those what’s the best source of raw material and this is get a question I get asked most frequently I mean polyester is
Derived from oil it’s essentially a plastic there is recycled polyester and a lot of clubs now do use that but that tends to be derived from plastic bottles and there are questions over how those plastic bottles are collected you know are they collected in an ethical way are
The workers who collect them paid Fair wages for example and we’ve also found scenarios where new plastic Bott are being made just to melt down into chips to be able to produce recycled polyester that just sounds bizarre so so that is actually happening that’s yeah there’s been cases where that’s happened and
Also the problem is that recycled polyester at the moment is out of Premium compared to Virgin polyester so it may cost you more it’s not a perfect scenario you know what we want to get to is this idea of textile to textile recycling as I say only 1% of used
Clothes are actually made into new textiles at the moment but pummer has launched for the next season a program where where it will make all its replica shirts from textile to textile recycling now some of the materials that are used for this are actually pre-consumer waste so they’re off the factory floor so
They’re cutting waste for example and that is easier to use because it’s not contaminated it’s a monom material for example so we do see moves towards this and I think pummer is leading in this way but there’s still a lot of way to go and I would say there’s no perfect
Material you know cotton even though it might be better at the end of life because it can potentially biodegrade it’s a very thirsty crop so it uses a lot of water so for me the most perfect material is the one that you already own you know it’s the Garment that you have
In your wardrobe rather than us continuing to talk about sustainable Brands and what’s the great brand that I can buy from actually look at what you have already because that’s the best thing that you can do is wear and use the clothes that you have in your
Wardrobe buy one one shirt by all means but continue to wear that shirt to every game you know across Seasons you don’t need to buy a new shirt every season that’s the most sustainable thing that you can do I think this a good message it’s interesting with with kids in that
Message I’m not trying to have a get out of jail free card for kids here but being a parent and thinking about you know do you put them in the latest kit or can you you know can you buy a kit that would last longer so as a football
Fan I can buy a shirt that lasts quite a long time if it’s not necessarily this year’s shirt you can have a polo shirt that’s got your Club on or something like that and do something different so that’s just me thinking out loud of ways I could look at doing things differently
For my kids so I’m not having to buy a shirt every year or whatever or not trying not to feel that pressure to do that and I think it is super hard I’ve got two kids but you know there are circular business models that we could
Lean into one could be Club driven so they could have a rental model where you could actually rent it for one season you know and as the child grows then you kind of give that back they can rent another one next season but there are also um resale platforms that specialize
In kids and sportsware K A 3r as one of them so think about actually could you buy this already used I know that can be complex when people start to put names and numbers on the back because it personalizes it but I would say there’s a huge amount of pressure on parents
Already a shirt is very expensive I know parents sometimes can’t afford the official shirt so then they end up buying a counterfeit one you know and that causes more problems for the CL Club longer term so I think it’s really about leaning into those circular economy business models you know this
Reusing and res sharing of shirts you know across potentially different classes within schools you know there are ways that you can do this and we see this with fashion you know there’s a company called the little Loop who were on Dragon’s Den who started a rental model for children’s wear that have been
Very successful and what they do is actually when the product can no longer be rented they resell that product at a lower price circular business model are estimated to be worth 700 billion by 2030 so it can be hugely profitable we just have to think differently about how
We get the value within the use phase of that life cycle we’ve talked a lot there about more professional side of sport I’m just thinking out loud really about Grassroots sport when I was younger our teams shared the kit we we would have a kit and we’d pass it down to the team
Below passed it down to the team below and you know I I coach a Grassroots football team and they have actually recently launched a sustainability policy and I think things will be moving forward but it does very much seem like a lot of people want to have a new kit
At least every couple of years it doesn’t seem that systematic in terms of passing a kit down to other Generations whereas when I was younger and it was probably more of a whether it was a people thing whether it was an economic type thing we shared that kit you know
We we wore it few years later somebody else would get it and I remember walking along once and seeing my old team playing and going that’s our kit hit and it must have been 10 years after we’d worn it so it does seem a little bit like we’ve we’ve moved backwards in a
Sense from where we used to be with with sharing and whether it be car sharing or passing football boots on to people it seems like now we are a bit more consumer driven and we don’t naturally do this as much and we really need to
Try and bring it back 100% I think overc consumption has become the norm and AS Global manufacturing’s got cheaper it is very affordable to be able to buy kit you know and it almost comes the standard when you join as some Grassroots clubs it wasn’t so long ago
That you’d have a shared kit bag you know and you would just normally hand things down and share them I think we need to normalize that you know leaders and managers within Grassroots need to facilitate it and create systems where that makes it easier than actually buying new rather than kind of saying
When you join us we’ll give you a free shirt actually look at how you can facilitate that across your different teams but yeah I mean we’ve spoken about before you know my dad laughs at me in terms of circular economy because to him it’s just you know oldfashioned Common
Sense you would use the item for as long as you could until it basically fell apart and then you would try and repair it and only when you could no longer repair it would you harvest those components and try and Salvage the components from it but that’s just not
Normal now for us we’ve got to a state where actually you know we’re just driven by newness and I think it’s we just really need to take a step back and actually have a think about whether that’s sensible especially with the issues that we’re facing within the climate and environment
Just thinking there when I was younger and you hopefully I’m not embarrassing myself here but putting putting a patch on a on a pair of trousers or was it called darning is that was that am I making that word up y you know my my grandma would do that I mean putting a
Patch on I could probably do that but darning I I have no idea how to do this so this seems like you know we’ve lost the skill to do some of these things or all the time or we’ve got more money and we we can afford to do these things but
How do how do we try and bring those things back I mean to me it starts with education you know one of the sectors that we work with is the education sector and when we’ve worked with schools especially around textiles they tell us that actually it takes them much
Longer now to teach the physical skills of say quilting or sewing because of the dexterity of the handwork of the students you know a lot of the students want to be told what to do and get it right first time so I think there’s a real Gap in the practical skills and
That we need to teach those through education and I think we’ve also prioritized you know more academic learning than we have in terms of skills-based learning to me I feel like there are issues with the education system in terms of people coming out not being prepared for the world of work in
The next 10 to 15 years because we focused so heavily on academic things like Innovation things like 3D reasoning you know being able to touch a material and understand things like tactility are really important and I think once we start to get those skills back and we create space within
That which I know is very crammed time frame that we have in school I think it will make more rounded students as well you know because they’ll have a balance of things like Academia art physical skills sports we could probably do another podcast on on this um on
Education my role is actually so my title is applied sport management lead so mine is all all about developing experiential learning um within sport management but realistically we only we only have me leading a module on it whereas the rest of it is is is academic there’s a
Few streams that we push this experiential side through but it was seen as quite Innovative five or six years ago when I came to lra to try and develop this so I’m definitely preaching to the converted definitely lots more practical uh should be developed within
Education I was just going to say I mean I kind of just think about my career and I did two textile a levels and if I hadn’t had that opportunity or I hadn’t had a teacher that believed in me I wouldn’t be where I was now you know my
Dad was always like can you not be a lawyer or something like that get a good job and I was like I’ve traveled the world with my job you know I’ve been quite successful in what I’ve done because somebody believed in me and because I had the opportunity at school
And I had the resources to be able to do that I don’t know if I was in education there if I would have those same resources you know or if they would be prioritized and if you’re not academic you know if you’re neurodiverse your strengths might lie in
Other areas and kids don’t always get those areas that nurtured we’ve had cuts to things like the Arts you know if we look at things like music for example it’s not prioritized within school so it’s not necessarily just skills it’s a lot of the academic subjects just get
Squeezed in terms of time because schools are really pushed for those results in terms of things like math science English well we’re not going to go into detail now but I can’t resist and so in terms of diversity side of things we we do tend to produce very
Similar students and and very outcomes from our from our educational system I’m I’m not speaking love with I’m talking gc’s a levels going down that road you know I’ve experienced it with with certain students in the past where actually where I’ll say we want you to be Innovative I want you to think
Differently and it takes them a while to go what I’m allowed to like give my opinion yeah do you know what I’m often wrong and I’m teaching you things so do it please and it it gives a lot of conf you have it takes time to give them
Confidence for them to be able to start doing that and that’s probably one of the roles that I take on here but yeah we certainly need to see more of that yeah and you have to create a safe space for people to feel that they can be vulnerable and that they can be
Different and they can get it wrong you know I’m a very proud dyslexic um and I think that’s part of My Success because I do think differently I’m often the person who you know says something off on a tangent in a room and they’re like yeah we’ve never thought of it that way
Before and I’m very proud of that because I think you know diverse teams have better ideas you you know mono thinking teams end up in an echo chamber and we really have to create the space and the culture to promote that within schools and within organizations definitely I think it
Brings it back to what we’re talking about here because we need change we need to do things differently and we’ve talked about the kind of life cycle or circular design and different ways of of doing things to reduce travel reduce the use of certain materials to reduce carbon footprint all those things need
To be done differently so we need we need this different so just thinking about that have you got any examples from either Grassroots or or professional clubs that are thinking differently who are doing some really good things in this space yeah and I would just kind of say one other thing
It’s about leadership you have to have that diversity and that Innovation at leadership level to be able to drive these ideas through and I think you know that can be missing but I think there’s a lot of different example of people who are thinking differently you know sale
GP for example they launched recently um performance where that was made out of Marino wool so rather than using uh polyester they really challenged technically what could be done with different materials and made a big release about that and I think that is something that we need to see more of
We’ve had big events such as the Olympics where Brands such as Nike will use that as an opportunity to really kind of talk about things like their recycled materials or what they’re doing in terms of sustainability but I think there’s much further that we need to go you know in
Terms of standout Brands a lot of the brands who are really making a difference are potentially the smaller Brands who could be more Dynamic who can be more Innovative who can be quicker and aren’t accountable in the same way to shareholders so one of them that
Comes to mind is a brand called Luna they make a cricket kit for women and they’re the first brand ever to do that for women which if you think in 2024 that’s a ridiculous statement in itself you know that most uh cricket Weare has generally been designed for men but you
Know they’ve really gone into their supply chain to understand what material should we make this from how can we extend the product life of this what are we going to do in terms of takeback schemes when the player no longer needs this they’ve also done things like supporting education around kit and
Equipment about longevity but also around things like safeguarding for example so I think we need to kind of learn the lessons also from the small Dynamic Brands as well as the big players because eventally they’re the ones who are the disruptors who are going to start changing the game and
There are things around different uses of integrating tech for example so there are companies who are offering buyback uh values to garments so for example when you buy a garment potentially from a sports brand they will give you a guaranteed buyback price so that you know that you can resell it for a
Certain amount so I think things like that are quite interesting and then also you have companies such as connected fanatic ICS who aim to basically decouple the physical product from economic growth so you buy one shirt but that shirt will provide you with multiple digital experiences so it has a
Chip embedded and through that chip you can access unique digital events experiences and that is a new way to engage fans so there’s a lot of innovation that’s happening I think it just takes leadership who are willing to drive kind of the unknown you know and
To take that risk and to think about future proofing themselves you know we’re going to be living in a completely different world in 5 to 10 years you have to be starting now to be able to create the structures to safeguard your organization there’s a lot of good
Examples there and later on we touch upon um is it reading I think you’ve mentioned me before around the climate change banner that they have warming Stripes yeah yeah that’s the one the warming stripes and we’ll move we’ll move on to talk about fans shortly I think you mentioned some Grassroots
Things to me in the past as well around cricket and the use of cricket equipment specifically can you can you just touch upon that for us yeah so I have done quite a lot of research on Cricket uh one of the case studies that we did with yire Cricket foundation and the center
For sustainable design was to look at reuse within the UK so what tends to happen is most of the kit and equipment that is donated ends up overseas you know lot of it is shipped to Africa but when you do that it incurs things like carbon emissions but you also have to be
Very careful in terms of your due Ence of what happens to that product when it gets to Africa for example how do you make sure that it is used by the players how do you make sure that it continues to have longevity and doesn’t break for
Example when it gets there and what I found was that there was an attitude that there was a greater need abroad than there is here and then I talked to Kendall from Yorkshire Cricket foundation and she said there’s a massive need in the UK and she understood that need because she was
Very close to the stakeholders that she worked with you know we talked to schools who said that they couldn’t afford to teach Cricket because it was too expensive they couldn’t afford to buy the kit so what she did was to start a reuse program and people would donate
A lot of items you had a lot of people who had stuff sitting in their garage as stored waste and they donated it so that it enabled new players to enter the game and at the time we did the research there was a lot of press around the lack
Of diversity within Cricket the barriers that exist and if you think it can cost about £1,000 to cut out a new player you know that is prohibitive to most people you know and a lot of people just wouldn’t even be able to try out whether they liked the game or not because they
Couldn’t afford the protective equipment if you reduce that Financial barrier you encourage more people to play you get the social benefits of playing a sport and it’s better for the sport long term because you know you’ll grow the skills and get better players so what we found
Is that actually within the UK there is a huge need and potentially we don’t always identify or understand the needs that are on our doorstep and in very low cost and even no cost ways we can create that infrastructure of reuse you know around the club to break down those
Barriers I I think there’s lots of my friends who who used to play cricket and I imagine their garages are full still trying to you know live the dream that one day they might go back um so yeah get those things out your garages and and and actually give them to people
Make use of them would be a would be a good message to have we’re going to we’ll draw to a close fairly soon but I wanted to touch upon fans and participants so we’ve looked at looked at UEFA we looked at professional clubs and Brands and those kind of things but
What kind of impact do we as as fans or participants have and what can we do to help kind of facilitate change I think fans have um a massive role to play you know they are the reason why the game exists most of the time but they also
Have a huge amount of power in terms of what they consume and my advice would be buy what you love so if you really want to support that club and you want to buy the shirt do that but continue to use that shirt for its full life you know do
Not feel the need to buy a new shirt every season there are other ways that you can support your Club you know through things like ticket prices things like that but I think just because we’re marketed products each season we don’t need to fall into the Trap of buying it
And I think the most uh Power fans can have is to decide where they spend their money and what they decide to buy and in relation to merchandise yeah I think that it’s quite a simple message but when we live in a era of overc consumption actually just being really
Conscious about how and where you’re spending your money I think is really key and I think I like simple messages we and I know Mark do works on this kind of presumption that that fans have that power to to make change and if if we can start to make different choices or you
Know maybe is apply pressure back on to clubs and and National governing bodies then they will change because we are we are them so I think those Simple Solutions such as well maybe buy a kit every other year for your kids or maybe buy something different that you can
Wear forever is is a much better choice for you and for the club I think they’re key things to to make a difference um I think as well with Grassroots we all need to make these kind of decisions ourselves so you mentioned it to me before around just say say no to that
Free t-shirt potentially and maybe people will stop doing it so much um my draw is full of free t-shirts I’ve worked in sport for a long time but maybe we do need to start saying no to that and maybe reducing the amount of time that it happens for and also
Passing on kit to other people whether that’s again if it’s kids football those the football boots I know there’s a lot of clubs now doing that where they’re recycling football boots and maybe there’s a contribution to the club but the passing down of Kit to other people
The the sharing of cars all these conscious decisions that we can all make can make a huge difference and that the power of the fans or the participants is huge because the people above us will will change their behaviors based on ours and we seem to think the other way
Around at times and I think we do have so much power for for change 100% And I think in some of the work that Mark’s done with pledge ball you know they found that it only takes between 20 to 25% of people to actually create a
Tipping Point to make change so I think if we can keep it simple and just buy what we love but really utilize that product that is one of the most powerful things that we can do that will have such a huge knock on effect you know and
Like you say just ref do you really need another race t-shirt you know if it’s just going to sit in your drawer if you if Martin if you’re wearing those race t-shirts every week happy days to you but if they’re just sat there I would kind of encourage you to kind of say
Well do I need this next time and when you sign up to a lot of events now like the London Marathon I think does it the Manchester Marathon does it they will give you an option to opt out you know and some people would say actually I’ll
Just have the medal instead of the rais T-shirt I want to have something to commemorate this but I don’t need both and I think we need more of those like opportunities to actually say no and I think governing bodies have the responsibility to make it easier and
More convenient for us to say no to the things that we don’t want I I definitely think they do but the more we can apply that pressure I I think they will start to make those those decisions that are probably the right ones not only for the
Planet but for profit and for people as well it kind of links it all back together where we started really just kind of drawing drawing to a close really it’s been really nice speaking to you and getting getting a real understanding of the problem with a fashion industry just highlighting some
Of that to us where sport contributes to this some of the big headlines of you know 60% of the kit not being used it’s getting incinerated even in the UK all of the recycling of things that get well reusing sorry of things that get sent to different countries a lot of it’s not
Being used it’s being dumped it’s being burnt um so we really need to reduce our consumption of these Goods um it’ll be interesting to see the changes that clubs make and and Brands and manufacturers in how they start to to change the way that they produce these
Goods and I think that the kind of scope three emissions piece will be a really interesting phase moving forward uh looking around legislations but I think kind of finishing the fans and the role that we play in consumption um one of the things stuck out and I wrote it down
Here around being a leader you gave an example earlier about somebody in their environment well nobody’s doing this so I’m just going to do it you know be great for people to you know what actually we need to start stepping up and making some differences to this
Thing so amazing to see people take that on board and really go yeah there’s no recycling or there’s no reuse in my club or the recycling is not very good and and just to take some responsibility and build a network of people around the country who are trying to make these
Changes and as you mentioned there and from The Pledge ball and the behavior change 20% of people so just two out of you two out of 10 of you start doing it and all of a sudden lots of people will start doing it I think that’s a good
Message to to kind of to end on really definitely and most reuse organizations are led by individuals based on passion and purpose and we’ll put a list in the show notes but it does just take somebody to stand up and say we can make a difference we can do it a different
Way and I would encourage everybody to do that we all have the power to do things differently thanks Joe it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you I’m sure as your research continues we might we might have to get you on again um when we start digging a little bit
Deeper definitely I’m sure this is something that’s going to grow and grow over the next couple of years certainly is well thanks again Joe thanks Martin by bye thanks for listening to the experts in sport podcast if you’d like to get in touch then please contact me Martin Foster at m. Foster al.
Ac.uk thanks for listening see you next time