This book is a follow-up to David Chernushenko’s 1994 groundbreaking, Greening our games: Running sports events and facilities that won’t cost the Earth, the first comprehensive look at modifying the way sporting events and facilities could be run to minimize damage to the environment. Sustainable Sport Management, is written to be a useful tool for both volunteers and professional organization and event managers as they struggle to find ways to advance their sport while having minimal negative impact on the environment. The book is written at a level suitable for working professionals, volunteer Boards of Directors, and undergraduate students, and would make an interesting text for undergraduate students in the area of sport management. It certainly won’t teach sports managers to run their programs, but rather, the book can teach those who already know how to run their events and organizations how to run them with greater environmental consciousness.

The thirteen chapters are divided into four major sections that take the reader from the “why” of the need for sustainable sport development, through inspiring and involving staff, volunteers and other stakeholders to become more environmentally active, to some specific and detailed ways in which both facilities and events can be environmentally improved. One of the great strengths of the book is the frequent use of side-bars and bullets that highlight credible, specific actions that either have been taken by real-world organizations or could be taken by the organization for which the reader has responsibility. I found that while reading, I was often side-tracked into making lists and notes about actions that I thought it would be wise for my own organization to take. I also started contemplating some of the organizational inertia I would have to overcome, and some of the resistance to change that I would likely face. I was therefore excited to come across a major heading: Overcoming resistance. That excitement soon evaporated when I turned the page to find that the section run for a total of 20 lines, 21 lines if you counted the heading. Now I don’t think that my university is a particularly anti-environmental institution, but I would anticipate some resistance to change, and the material presented in that one section was considerably less detailed than I would have liked.

At a deeper level, I have some concerns about the absence of suggestions or guidelines to help evaluate the trade-offs that inevitably face any organization making environmentally sensitive decisions. I opened the book at random to find an example – and on page 100 found the following sensible and logical set of questions to be asked in the evaluation of products that an organization might buy: Does the product contain recycled material? Does the product contain banned or restricted substances? Does the design minimize use of resources such as energy or water? Is it easily maintained and repaired? Is it reconditionable or recyclable after use? Does the product require special disposal considerations? My problems came when I tried to apply these questions in consideration of some office purchases. In selecting paper – no problem with the decision to go with photocopier paper that had 20% recycled material, but once I tried to apply the same set of questions to a piece of equipment I ran into a brick wall. How much recycled material did the two manufacturers have in their photocopiers? Neither manufacturer could (or would) tell me. Both said “parts could be recycled – but with no details of how much, or which parts, were forthcoming. One manufacturers also mentioned that the parts could only be recycled, “If the facilities were available locally” but couldn’t tell me what facilities were actually needed.

I also thought it would be good idea to test the book against its own recommendations for printed materials, so I turned to the “Sustainable Publication Checklist” on page 142 and worked my way through it. Printing the book on acid free recycled paper was clearly in line with the book’s own recommendations, as was the use of only black ink; but in a couple of other areas the book fell short. In particular I was struck by the use of glue bindings in a book that recommends, “avoid all glues in binding,” and by the large amount of white space in a book that recommends the efficient use of white space (narrow margins and single-spacing). As a test, I scanned in a couple of pages, used optical character recognition to turn the material into word processing text, and had a couple of my students try different, attractive, layouts. I have to conclude that the book could have been printed elegantly on about 50 fewer pages per book. Although these are relatively minor issues, they illustrate the great practical difficulty of putting into daily practice even simple recommendations when decision making is distributed.

I received a CD-ROM that came with my copy of the book, and it contained an Adobe Acrobat electronic version of the book, along with some very useful information and photographs from around the world, including materials from Greenpeace on the environmental impact of the Sydney 2000 Olympic games, environmental guidelines from Sport Canada, environmental documents from Switzerland, and environmental benchmark data from Australia.

Overall, this is a very useful, readable and valuable book. I recommend it to any sport, recreation, or physical education organization that runs an office, operates a facility, or organizes an event. I cannot believe that there would be any such organization that could not improve its effectiveness, its public image, and its contribution to the environment by following the sensible, practical, suggestions made in this book. The collection of case studies and real-world examples of environmentally sound operations that are found throughout the book are reason enough to buy it, but the book will not change the environmental behavior of its readers without some effort on their part. There are often effective ways to reduce environmental damage, and this book is excellent in showing what needs to be done, what can be done, and how different organizations have made an environmental difference. It is a welcome addition to the reading in our field and above all it has one major virtue – it forces the reader to think about an important global issue to which we, as a profession, have so far paid too little attention.