A Dundee karate group hosting an international competition is aiming to make the event carbon neutral for the first time.
Roy O’Kane of Kanzen Karate has said that the group aim to make the seventh Kanzen Cup International Open as environmentally friendly as possible in support of the ongoing COP26 summit.
The competition is to be held on November 13 at the £30 million Regional Performance Centre in Dundee.
International attendees
Like COP26, it will be attended by visitors from across the globe, including athletes from as far afield as Romania, Pakistan, Egypt and France.
Many of these attendees plan to travel to Dundee via aeroplane – something Roy and his team are aware of and ready to offset.
Roy said: “Sport is a community and a community is part of society.
“As an organisation we are looking at how we play our part in protecting the environment and having carbon neutral events is part of that
“What we’re planning to do is engage with all our attendees and ask what they did to travel to the competition.
“We’re going to find out how far they came, if they flew, that sort of thing.
“We’re going to get an outside agency to add it all up and calculate our carbon footprint then we’ll offset that by investing in reforestation and other projects.”
‘Everything we do has an impact’
The 36-year-old says the eco-friendly idea came from some of the group’s youngest and most passionate members.
“There are so many young people that are just so in tune with this issue,” he said.
“The younger generation is very engaged in the climate change issue and we will be using the event to highlight our collective responsibility to tackle climate change.
“This is is such a huge issue and it’s clear that everything we do has an impact.
“Everyone has to play their part – there’s no question about that, no matter what you’re involved in.
“I think that anyone running an event like this, no matter what sport they’re involved in, they should be doing something like this.
“In the same way that safety, first aid and event compliance are so important, being carbon neutral is now up there with the list of minimum standards for us.”
