What NASCAR Can Teach Sustainability Professionals
Fan loyalty, combined with the ability of sports and entertainment to sway public opinion and habits, can create an immense force for the environmental movement, Hershkowitz said. Star athletes and other celebrities are role models, and clips of them tossing bottles into recycling bins and urging others to do so send a powerful message: Green behavior can be cool and sexy, but most importantly, it's normal.
"If you want to change the world, you don't emphasize how different you are from everybody else," said Hershkowitz.
Brand loyalty is the reason why so many Fortune 500 companies, including several that have their own sustainability programs, sponsor NASCAR, race car drivers and teams. Take a look around the tracks at the logos in the stands, on cars and the drivers' uniforms, suggested Brent Dewar, who led Global Chevrolet at General Motors and is now a senior advisor at the consulting firm GreenOrder. "It's a reflection of America," he said.
That's the sweet spot for corporate sustainability pros.
"We're interested in influencing the supply chain for all those industries," Hershkowitz said, speaking of sports in general and entertainment. Hershkowitz emphasized he and the NRDC have not worked specifically with NASCAR. But he has worked with Roush Fenway Racing (the team that includes NASCAR star Carl Edwards) as part of NRDC's consulting in major league sports.
Both Hershkowitz and Dewar observed that NASCAR usually doesn't get credit for its efforts to ease its environmental impact. "People don't think about that when they think of NASCAR," Hershkowitz said. "Even though NASCAR is gigantic, it's harder to message. NASCAR is a tough lift."
American Motor Sports' Green History
In U.S. motor sports, the IndyCar and American Le Mans series also pursue environmental initiatives. American Le Mans has the most mature programs. It was approached by the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency about five years ago in an effort to drive innovation in fuel efficiency.

American Le Mans has since adopted the EPA’s Green Racing Protocols and conducts two contests during the season that recognize best performance and fuel efficiency with the lightest tread on the environment. Manufacturers are eligible to win the Green Challenge Championship, created by the DOE, EPA and SAE International, a global group of automotive and aerospace engineers. Race teams compete for the Michelin Green X Challenge awards.
NASCAR and its leaders are acutely aware of its image beyond its fans and the motor sports industry. That awareness informs every element of how NASCAR does green and why it chose to focus its initiatives on waste, emissions and energy.
Here are four key points in NASCAR's strategy:

1. Literally Walk the Walk Before You Do Anything Else
When NASCAR CEO Brian France brought Lynch aboard, the sustainability expert's first move was "to walk every inch of every venue," absorb how NASCAR operates, connect with its many layers of business partners – venues, sponsors, teams and more -- and then build a game plan. It was "almost like a cultural immersion," he said. "You have to be part of it in order to start to understand the nuances and how these gears all fit together." A former member of the Boston Consulting Group, he initially thought, "How hard could it be?"
"It really did take me six months to kind of work my way through it," he said, and even now he keeps in mind that in NASCAR years he is a novice despite his more than two decades as an expert consultant.
Takeaway for Sustainability Pros: On-the-ground, first-hand information is essential.
2. Do First, Talk Later
NASCAR devised its initiatives based on industry knowledge, deep research into its market and identifying key operation areas where it could make a difference. (In NASCAR's eyes, its waste, emissions and energy initiatives share have equal priority, Lynch said.) The organization has a precise idea of where it's going, where it started and how much it needs to do to move the needle. But don't expect to hear much about that for now.