Green Squash Tour: When Sport Meets Sustainable Growth

From Lagord to Cognac through Niort and Angers: in November, a series of four PSA Challenger Tour tournaments – called Green Squash Tour – will take place in the West of France. As its name suggests, the aim is to bring sport and sustainable growth together.

How it all started:

When asked about the inception of the Green Squash Tour, the four promoters all give credit where credit is due. “The original idea came from Renan Lavigne,” Yves Malzoppi, Jean-Michel Masotti, Nordine Ramdaoui and Nicolas Barbeau say.

Angers and Lagord were initially supposed to host PSA events in May, but the organisers did not want to hold them behind closed doors because of the pandemic. The national coach suggested they could postpone to November in order to create a French tour, since the events in Niort and Cognac were already setup in the calendar.

“It’s a great opportunity for the players to feature in several tournaments without having to travel too much, especially for those coming from abroad,” said Barbeau, promoter of the Hektor Angers Playground PSA Open 2021. “On that basis, it seemed wise to go further and integrate this tour in a wider approach centred around sustainable growth, which happens to be an important topic for me.”

Therefore, the next step was to draft – and sign – an environmentally friendly charter that brings the four tournaments together in common project. Within this framework, they receive guidelines and recommendations for their actions, make their intent and commitment publicly available and implement the means for environmentally friendly measures. As a reward, the Green Squash Tour was granted the bronze label “Développement durable, le sport s’engage®” (Sport commits to sustainable growth, in English) from the National Olympic Committee.

“It took me some time to complete the application – and I take this opportunity to thank the French Federation and its president Julien Muller, who supported us in the process – but it was worth it,” added Barbeau. “This label gives us some credibility, and in the long run it will help us in the search for partners specifically involved in sustainable growth. We are aware that the charter is quite big and a bit demanding, but we will draw upon this first experience to possibly lighten it.”

The Green Squash 2021 environmentally friendly charter is split into four main topics:

(1) Organization management and governance: The aim is to value the people who contribute to the events, to promote diversity – whether among organisers, entrants and the audience – to implement actions related to healthy diet and to engage in a continuous improvement process between each tournament.

(2) Transportation: The goals are to allow players to enter several tournaments with a single trip, to encourage carpooling and to help them with accommodation between each tournament so that they do not go home unnecessarily.

(3) General tournament stewardship: The organisers wish to use socially and ecologically responsible products, services and brands, whether with food, communication and also limiting waste production in general.

(4) Raise awareness to the values of sustainable growth: The Green Squash Tour aims at promoting the values of sustainable growth in various areas to partners, entrants as well as the audience, and to value the approach to mainstream and specialized media.

Green Squash Tour – Tournaments:
Open PSA Lagord Tennis Squash 2021 – November 2-6
Open International Niort Venise Verte 2021 – November 8-12
Hektor Angers Playground PSA Open 2021 – November 16-18
Open de Cognac 2021 – November 24-28

Green Squash Tour, Nicolas Barbeau /Tour Coordinator