🍃 One sustainability project changed a whole sport

A few years ago, I was helping lead the sustainability work for the World Championship in horse-riding.

At the time, most of my experience came from manufacturing, so I found it fascinating to see how the same sustainability principles applied in a completely different environment.

The organisers assumed the event's emissions came from lots of different sources.

What we discovered surprised everyone.

More than 80% of the event's carbon footprint came from one thing:

PVC rubber mats used underneath the competition tracks.

The mats were a mandatory standard practice.

Nobody had really questioned them.

Until we did.

As I'm putting together my new video - a complete guide to making money from sustainability, this is one of the lessons that keep coming up.

Most people assume the biggest opportunities in sustainability will be very costly.

In reality, that often isn’t the case.

If you'd like early access when the video is released, you can join the waitlist here:

https://money-from-sutainability.scoreapp.com/ 

Back to the horse championship.

Together with track builders and the international governing body, we tested whether some tracks could perform properly without the mats.

They could.

The result?

The event removed the mats from around half the tracks, nearly halving emissions while also reducing costs significantly.

It's a useful reminder.

Sometimes the biggest opportunity is sitting in plain sight, protected by the words: "That's how we've always done it."

Best,

Jasper