Plastic bottles in play

VTB United Basketball League supported by Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and SIBUR holds Basketbottle environmental campaign.

Overall, some 40 bottles of water are discarded during one training session by a basketball team, who typically train twice a day. Each club has two teams – senior and junior – so all together, the players discard around 160 plastic bottles per day. On the days of matches, the number goes up by another two or three thousand bottles discarded by the fans.

As part of the Year of Ecology, the VTB United Basketball League supported by SIBUR and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment held the Basketbottle environmental campaign to collect plastic waste during its May play-off games. The initiative was joined by national basketball stars, VIP fans and other basketball lovers.

The VTB United Basketball League’s May play-off series stands out not only thanks to its spectacular matches, but also due to a spot-on environmental initiative, whereby all plastic water bottles discarded by thirsty players during the games and training sessions were collected for further recycling.

The teams encouraged their fans to take part in waste sorting arranged as a dedicated game, where they were to squash their plastic bottles and throw them into a waste sorting rim. Throws were video shoot by participants and posted on social networks, with the most spectacular one receiving a special award fr om the organisers.

Viktor Khryapa, captain of CSKA Moscow, gave a lead in playing this environmental game.

The initiative seeks to promote plastic waste sorting and recycling.

Sergey Ivanov,
Special Presidential Representative for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport, commented:

«I like the saying ‘It is clean not where people clean it up, but wh ere they don’t litter’. A half-empty garbage bin with piles of garbage around it is a typical scene in Moscow, which made me think about an environmental project linked to basketball. We all throw litter in street bins, but often fail to strike home, so I’m sort of calling for collecting rebounds, just like in basketball. My colleagues took the idea on board with small rim bins subsequently installed at all play-off venues».

The joint project of the VTB United Basketball League, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and SIBUR is an example of environmental initiatives promoted by popular sportsmen, stars and producers in different countries all over the world. For instance, former ultra-triathlon world champion Vidmantas Urbonas drew public attention to the problem of preserving the purity of Lake Baikal by swimming across its widest part in 2011. In 2015, Adidas released a large batch of sports shoes made from recycled ocean plastic.

Currently, the heads of the VTB United League clubs are discussing the idea of new team kits made from recycled plastic waste.

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