The recently approved Erasmus+ project ACCESS, standing for Achieving Circularity in Cities through Sustainability in Sports, had its kick-off meeting in Brussels last week bringing together the technical experts and sport organisations participating in the project.

The project led and coordinated by ACR+ will see the Danish and Welsh Football Associations, the Gaelic Athletics Association and FC Porto actively improving their environmental performances in order to contribute more to the circular economy and environmental strategies of their respective host cities. Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, the additional technical partner will work together with ACR+ with the objective of supporting these sport organisations on that journey. To achieve the project’s objectives, the sport organisations will undergo a thorough analysis of their current environmental performances, principles and objectives, as well as internal structures in order to identify key hotpots, improvement potentials and necessary support they might require. Once the strategies and plans of their respective cities are analysed, too, the project will put forward a plan and a roadmap for narrowing the gap between the strategies and objectives of sport organisations and those of the cities hosting their events. This would lead to achieving the overall objective of the project – enabling sport organisations to adapt their environmental performances to the targets of their local and regional authorities and at the same time embedding local and regional strategies in the world of sport.

The above-mentioned process will mainly happen through a series of 4 Circular City Committees, following the principles of Communities of Practices. They will bring together key stakeholders and practitioners from the 4 project countries into working groups which would join forces and diverse knowledge and skills and kick-start not only cross-sectoral cooperation but also open doors to various learning experiences. Many other sport organisations are expected to join through a series of replication activities which would also implying project partners passing on the acquired skills.

The 4 cities and regions are yet to be confirmed, but some of ACR+ members, namely Lipor in Portugal and East-Midlands Waste Region in Ireland would surely benefit from the project as the cities of Porto and Dublin would see quite some activities in the coming next 3 years.