Green Athletics is a new club at Macalester that is committed to bringing sustainability into athletics. Founder Bruno Guiduli ’26 shared some key insights into the club in a recent interview.
“Very few sustainability departments are very well linked with athletic departments,” Guiduli said. “I noticed that [this] was a vulnerability of this [broader] environmental sustainability movement.”
Guiduli said that there needs to be a link between the two while taking a sustainability course in his sophomore year. He decided that forming the club would be a way to bridge the gap between the Sustainability Office and the Athletic Department. While researching sustainability in sports and developing Green Athletics at Mac, Guiduli reached out to multiple professionals within athletic departments around the Twin Cities and other parts of Minnesota and asked them about how environmental sustainability is integrated into their programs.
“It’s something that’s very new [and] something that’s a growing field,” Guiduli said.
This is one of the challenges Guiduli had to navigate in his formation of the club: how to build on something that does not have a super strong footing and ensure that it actually holds significance within a community.
Guiduli helped to spread awareness about sustainability and athletics through the Green Athletics’ recent CC After Dark event.
The club invited the Macalester student body to The Loch to learn more about them, ways to get involved and the strides it has taken to raise awareness about sustainability in sports. In the spirit of sustainability, they also gave away old Macalester sports jerseys and equipment that would otherwise be disposed of.
Guiduli mentioned that the club is involved with the Minnesota Sustainability in Sports and Events Coalition. Members from Green Athletics met with representatives from Minnesota United, the Vikings, the Twins, and the Timberwolves to discuss ways that they have implemented sustainability initiatives into their operations, and ways that they can improve upon them.
