Triple Pundit: NASCAR Goes Green – A Job Well Done Or Lipstick On A Pig?

Earlier this week NASCAR announced race cars had racked up more than one million miles of driving on Sunoco Green E15 ethanol blend, the official fuel this season. This choice of fuel is part of a greater effort NASCAR is making to green up its auto racing business. Some see it as a great opportunity not just to reduce NASCAR’s footprint, but also to reach about 75 million fans that follow the races on TV and at the tracks. Others believe this is nothing more than greenwashing.

If you ask Mike Lynch, managing director of green innovation for NASCAR and the architect of these changes, it’s actually very simple. “The incongruity is part of what makes going green in this sport so impactful,” he told the New York Times earlier this month. “We get that sport that bring so many people together and broadcast to such a large audience has environmental impacts. The good news is that its environmental impacts that can be addressed with best in class solutions and technologies” he added on another occasion.

NASCAR is an extremely popular sport, and most of the fans do not have an interest in environmental issues. In other words, they’re not treehuggers and I’m not sure how well they respond to messages coming from Al Gore. NASCAR races are wasteful from an environmental standpoint, producing not just a large carbon footprint, but also tons of garbage headed to the landfill. Sustainably minded readers will recall that waste means an opportunity for efficiency. You can imagine the potential Lynch saw in front of him when he took this job in 2008.

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Originally published on Triple Pundit, republished with kind permission.