Sustainable America's Cup - a smooth partnership
THE INNOVATION:
An Olympian Gold-Medalist-turned-Sustainability-Manager takes on the 34th America’s Cup, with the partnership of the event's host city, San Francisco, voted the most sustainable city in North America.
Jill Savery
Head of Sustainability
Event Authority
America's Cup
Introduction...
This event is taking place in one of the most sustainable cities in the world…. voted the most sustainable in North America, and we are delivering this event in line with those ambitions. It’s been part of the thinking from the very beginning…. The whole area is really taking off right now.
The [San Francisco] Dept. of Environment has been a great support for us. The forward thinking and pretty strong policies locally around sustainability actually support what we are trying to do.
SF has a very ambitious goal to be zero-waste. They just announced a few months ago that they’ve achieved a 80% diversion rate city-wide, probably the best in the world. [The City has] mandatory recycling and composting policies for everyone that’s here – everyone: – businesses, residents, events… So it actually makes my job, as Sustainability Manager, a lot easier.
Materials
Some of the policies that are less related to zero-waste have to do with materials. Whenever you have an event, think of all the temporary materials that are brought in… whether it’s furniture, walling systems, tents and so forth… One of the local policies is about [timber-sourcing]. There is a policy banning virgin redwood and tropical hardwoods. We’ve taken it one step further... to [require] FSC certified timber.
Personal Journey
- I was an Olympian Gold-medalist in 1996 in synchronized swimming, and I also have a passion for protecting the environment. So I decided to combine these two passions into this career. I went back to school to get a Masters degree, to get more training. This was a time when this was relatively new.
This industry is really taking hold, certainly on a global event basis, but also at a corporate level. For example at Oracle when they host OracleWorld, they have a whole sustainability plan, and they then educate others internally to [apply sustainability] in events around the world.
Evolution of a Water-Bottle Culture
[Back in 1996] when [my synchronized swimming] team moved into the brand-new Olympic Village, and when we walked into our kitchen, there was a [huge] mound of single-use plastic water bottles… that was really not necessary! Nowadays you would not see that.
[“I remember when bottled water was a new thing… the fact that the contained beverage was a healthy beverage was such a step forward…. But then time goes on, and it’s not enough”.] Here in San Francisco, it’s very important to us to raise awareness about single-use plastics and very important to the City…. If you do a port event of over 5000 people, you cannot sell, use or distribute single-use plastics….
No single-use plastics, compostable utensils…. These are the best practices… No single-use plastic bags, no balloons... ["No balloons! but I’m sure there will be lots of fun things there…"]
Words of Wisdom
Find others who are also trying to do it, and work together, so every single entity doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Use your local partners, your government partners.
A lot of this work in terms of changing a system relates to people…. Most of them want to do the right thing… But do they have the time and energy and are they convinced it’s the right way to go? So a lot of this work is about psychology and behavior change… you want to enable and inspire people, and if everyone can do that, then we can make some progress.
See Jill's bio at GreenBiz.com
See GreenBiz’ interview with Jill
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