How to secure buy-in as a sustainability lead in sport
Lucas Nabarro from the Carbon Literacy Project offers thoughts on framing the sustainability conversation to achieve maximum buy-in.
Date: 5th May 2026
Author: Lucas Nabarro, the Carbon Literacy Project
To synonymise sustainability and sport, the status quo needs to be confronted. Extreme and changing weather is threatening the consistency and cost of grassroots sport, whilst professionally, the directives are increasingly for ‘more…more…more’. This juxtaposition of existential threat and commercial gain is creating a worrying gulf between amateur and professional sport. The challenge is to establish a new system which doesn’t compromise the quality, health, and viability of sport. To get there, we need visionaries in the sports sector who repackage sustainability in a way that secures buy-in within the current system.
Why buy-in is important
Visionaries aren’t simply great thinkers; they are also master seducers. Their unique skill is often their ability to attract others to think and act from their perspective.
They do so by being multilingual, not dialectically, but in the language of business. They improvise, continually remoulding their ideas to fit the priorities of the stakeholders they engage. In one conversation, their idea is framed in the language of profit, the next in the language of capacity building, the next in the language of compliance. This multilingual instinct propels ideas from ‘nice to haves’ to ‘must haves’. It’s what establishes visionaries as those capable of revolutionising the systems they operate in.
The languages of seduction in professional sport
In the world of business - which is now very difficult to distinguish from the world of professional sport - the mother tongue is profit. If you can speak that, the system tends to reward you well. Sports professionals are often multilinguals who balance performance and profit. So, a skilled individual looking to progress their agenda in sport will do so by coupling their objectives to increases in performance and/or profit.
Take the Enhanced Games as an example. This is a multi-disciplinary sporting event where competitors are welcome to take performance-enhancing drugs. A far cry from the meritocratic ideal of athletes testing human limits, which has always ruled sport. However, the pilot event has successfully marketed a reimagining of the limits of performance, promising a lucrative reward for those who break world records.
So, the key question is: how can sustainability be coupled to outcomes with a higher priority in sport, so it becomes embedded in operational delivery?
Progressing sustainability within the confines of the current sports landscape
1. The bottom line – Environmental sustainability is financial sustainability.
Sustainability and financial viability are two interrelated operating principles.
Instant savings can be made from sustainable measures which reduce variable costs. For example, exercising autonomy in how one sources water and electricity and promoting behaviour shifts toward conscious consumption are two pathways toward significant savings. Manchester City FC have built water runoff storage tanks and a private reservoir decreasing their potable water usage by 1 million litres a day, saving them up to £2,500 a day. This saving equates to nearly £1 million pounds a year. Yes, they operate on a business scale markedly different to that of most organisations in the sector, but the principle holds.
In the medium to long term, sustainability initiatives promote compliance and reduce exposure to risk. This protects revenue streams in the form of funding and grants. For instance, Every Move requires Sport England’s 130 partners to have robust sustainability action plans in place by March 2027 as a condition of further funding. Sustainable initiatives also decrease the financial losses experienced because of extreme weather events. Rewilding and water runoff projects can mitigate the ever-growing impact of flooding, which saw Nottingham Rugby Club seek £50,000 of aid through crowdfunding in 2024.
2. Securing the future of sport – Act now or watch it fade away
Sustainability isn’t simply a worthwhile operating principle; it’s a requirement to protect our prestigious sporting history, provide it with a viable future, and to move with the times.
Without a healthy and thriving grassroots sport foundation, our sporting system has no soul. Climate change costs grassroots sports £320 million every year, through a combination of repairs and cancelled events. Pair climate change with the Covid pandemic, the Ukraine war prompting an energy price shock, another prompted by the Iranian war, and a culture shift toward watching screens after looking at a screen all day. All these present a view that grassroots sport in the UK isn’t thriving, despite the positive news highlighted in successive iterations of the Active Lives survey, which shows consistent recovery in activity levels. Now add the fact that public and private investment continues to snub grassroots sport for its professional counterparts, and you develop a stretched and perforated sporting pyramid. The outcome is losing those Jamie Vardy underdog stories, opportunities for amateurs to dream, and a thinning sporting talent pool in our country.
From a commercial perspective, sustainability is a way to attract the fans of the future. 80% of young people in this country want to do more to protect the environment – and they are, quite literally, the future of our sector. Socio-economic insights from market leaders like Deloitte are also showing a shift toward green skills and a green economy. So, successful sporting organisations need to adapt. Policies like sport kit recycling, embedding ethical and sustainable procurement, or providing more sustainable travel options for fans are so much more than a way to reduce emissions; they are an effective model to engage and attract disillusioned fans, participants and workforce by showing your club cares.
The logic is the same for securing and keeping sponsors. To maximise their return on investment, sponsors want to be associated with clubs whose ethos resonates with their consumers. So, as the green economy and society inevitably grow, clubs with a strong environmental record look increasingly attractive. Adam Warner, Senior Director at PepsiCo, claims that sustainability-driven activations within its sports sponsorship portfolio are a “growing priority”. In contrast, Nottingham Forest’s poor environmental record was quoted to be “causing hassle” for their sustainability sponsor E.ON. Both examples indicate a shift which will see sporting organisations left behind if they don’t act now on sustainability.
3. Sustainability’s co-benefits – Drive change without saying the word climate
In certain situations, get to your end goal without drawing all the connections for your audience.
If you want to sequester more carbon on site, advocate for the potential of trees to protect the training ground from wind: a performance initiative advocated for by Louis Van Gaal in 2014.
If the impetus of the club is on health, then diet and air quality are two effective approaches. Locally sourced food needs to spend less time being stored, which reduces the number of preservatives needed. Moving to electric vehicles on-site reduces air pollution.
Finally, if the emphasis of the club is to generate local social value, then all the above can be applied to the community setting. Local suppliers can also be highlighted as a target to engage in more ESG-oriented practices, amplifying social value and addressing those scope 3 emissions.
Ensuring a future where sport and sustainability are synonymous
To successfully challenge a system, synergies are often required. For instance, if a solution is too myopic, it doesn’t stand the test of time, and if the focus is purely long-term, progress is too slow.
Currently, the sports sector needs those with the multilingual instinct to progress the dial toward sustainability at a faster rate. But the end objective is a reality where sustainability is a priority in its own right. The outcome is a healthy and futureproofed sector where capacity isn’t wasted on how to secure buy-in, rather it is applied to delivering impact.
To achieve this, visionaries need to break out of their siloes and make sustainability a collective concern. An initiative like the Carbon Literacy Project is effective at doing so because its adaptable framework ensures awareness and engagement are relevant. With courses accredited to suit over 1,000 audiences, it can be applied to micro or transnational corporations.
The training brings participants on a journey from awareness of climate change to engagement on climate action. Silos expand to domes, as certified attendees naturally start to embed sustainability into their roles. Conversations are no longer reframed to minimise pushback; instead, they are met with excitement and innovation. Everyone is bought in, a new culture is established, and visionaries are established as leaders.
Lucas Nabarro is Criteria Checking and Sport Coordinator at the Carbon Literacy Project.
