Andrew Aris studied at Notre Dame University (ND) from 1996 to 2000, where he also played „soccer“ for ND, the sport that the rest of the world calls football. In the USA football means gridiron. For many months Karli Richards Stenger (USA Ambassador and ND Graduate) and Andrew had been planning The Ball’s visit to ND and to South Bend, Indiana. After hundreds of emails being exchanged back and forth between the Spirit crew and various ND departments and athletic teams, a schedule had been set-up. We ended up running short sessions with the ND Men’s Soccer Team and the ND Men’s Lacrosse Team as well as a workshop with ND students interested in sustainability, which was hosted by ND Energy. A workshop with the ND Women’s Soccer Team was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute. The Ball itself was also invited pitch side and into the media area of ND Football’s home match against the University of California at Berkeley.
The most eye-opening of the visits was the workshop with ND sustainability students. It was a good chance to further test the educational resources we have been developing. We were supported in delivery by Erin Maron, a rower at ND who is also a member of Eco Athletes. Erin helped to promote the event with ND students. 15 students joined the workshop. After 90 minutes they each were ready to make an individual pledge and had come up with several ideas for collective climate action at ND.
Impressions from the workshop
We learned about a clothing exchange at one dormitory on campus; the difficulties of recycling in student dorms due to various reasons (from underage alcohol restrictions through to laziness of students to effectively clean the plastic and glass they use); dining hall leftovers being used to generate power on campus; even rooftops of University buildings being used to grow vegetables that are in turn used by chefs in the meals that the dining halls provide.
The ND Football home game days were recognized as creating massive amounts of waste. We saw this for ourselves: much food at tailgates is thrown away and empty cans of drink, single use plastic cups, plates and cutlery and other trash litter the parking lots. We can only imagine that this trash is thrown together, and that recycling doesn’t take place. Additionally, ND sports teams travel (very often flying) all over the country to games, even when the distances are relatively short. On top of that thousands of people arrive on game days in private jets.
The students identified several ways that university life could become more sustainable: students realized that they themselves would like to wear recycled ND sports clothes for home football games and generally on campus; establishing recycling monitors in dorms and within each floor of a dorm; ride sharing to go grocery shopping – instead of individuals having food delivered to their dorms – and in general; nutritional information to become available to students, faculty and staff about vegetarian and vegan options in the dining halls and for this to be advertised; a short video to be produced by ND sustainability team to be shown to all students living on campus about how to effectively recycle and to become green champions.
Erin Maron, Senior studying Environmental Science and Sustainability at the University of Notre Dame.
“I am on the Women’s Rowing team and this year I am working on a capstone project with one of my teammates that is focusing on sustainability and sports and raising awareness about the issues within the athletic department in sustainability both here and outside of ND. A big part of that is using sport as a platform to promote sustainability to fans and at gamedays. Sport brings large groups of people from different backgrounds together and unites us over one common fandom and should unite us over the care for our planet as well.”
“I have made pledges to reduce my meat consumption. I am trying not to drive alone by carpooling all the time, and to reduce my single use plastics to make my own personal impact. I hope that through sports and through other actions we can encourage others do the same and make their own pledges.”
