Green Clubs Projects

ERASMUS+ SPORT ACCESS Project - Achieving Circularity in Cities through Environmental Sustainability of Sports

• Project category Erasmus +
• Length from 01.06.2022 to 31.05.2025
• Websitehttps://access-cc.eu/
• Sponsor European Commission

The project (ERASMUS-SPORT-2021-SCP) aims to narrow the gap between the current environmental performances of sports clubs and associations, their strategies and practices and the strategies and targets of the cities and regions in which they are located and where their activities take place.

While many cities and regions in Europe are following the European-wide pattern of adopting required strategies that would enhance and deploy various European policies and frameworks locally regarding waste, water, energy, mobility and other environmental issues or the Circular Economy Action Plan and Green Deal in general, their successful implementation and uptake among sport organisations are rather limited and require additional efforts to achieve required contribution. The underlying factors for this are diverse and range from the shortage of qualified staff, lack of cooperation between sports clubs and associations and relevant academic bodies, low inclusion of existing staff in training and capacity building activities to general difficulties in cooperating with local and regional authorities.

This project intends to address these key challenges and transform them into enabling actions that promote the application of circular economy solutions to sport. It wants to promote innovative and replicable circular economy solutions among sport organisations, as well as their cooperation and synergy with local and regional authorities, contributing to the development of circular cities.

The GAA are one of four sports organisations participating in this project alongside the Danish Football Association, FC Porto and the Welsh Football Association, alongside the technical partners ACR+ and Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. The sports organisations’ current practices and understanding of their overall environmental performance is assessed to support the identification of potential improvements. Representatives of local and regional stakeholders including public authorities are then consulted through the establishment of a Circular City Committee to agree a set of pilot actions.

The key goal is to activate a collaboration between urban stakeholders and sport organisations for getting closer to circular cities.

Partnership
• Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (Belgio), Coord
• Sant'Anna School (partner)
• Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) (Ireland)
• Danish Football Association (DBU) (Denmark)
• FC Porto (Portugal)
• Football Association of Wales (FAW) (UK)
• ACR+ (Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management)

_{The GAA received €66,100 funding to participate in tis project.
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 the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}