On and off the court, the Cleveland Cavaliers are focused on being the best possible basketball team. On the court, that means teamwork and scoring. Off the court, the goals include making a positive impact on the region, including through sustainability. To that end, the Cavs recently hired the NBA’s first ever senior level sustainability leader, Danielle Doza, Vice President of Sustainability and Environmental Services.

In her new role, Doza is bringing her passion for sports and the environment to new initiatives in the area and behind the scenes. She recently shared the Cavs vision in a conversation with GCP.

Congrats on your new position! Can you share a little bit about why the Cavs think focusing on sustainability is so important?

We see the value of sustainability in many ways, not only potential cost savings and efficiency, but also brand reputation. It’s important to us for our stakeholders to know that we care about our community and we really want to do what's right and what's beneficial for our community. We see the importance not only in enhancing our operations, but in enhancing our social environmental impact.

We know we have a platform to influence our community, and we want to extend that impact even more through sustainability. We are always thinking about ‘How can we do things better?’

What are some specifics of your focus?
We are in a unique situation. We have about 2 million people coming through our doors every year, so we produce a lot of waste.

We’ve got anywhere from 10,000 to almost 20,000 people at an event, so that's a lot of waste. We are thinking about how we better manage that, how can we really separate waste properly. How can we educate our fans on how to do that?
On the energy side of things, we have a big building. It's about 30 years old now. How can we conserve more energy and increase efficiency, whether we need to do capital projects or it's just something small for conservation?
We continue to look at how can we do better looking at our water usage. We are always evaluating how we can be more efficient, how we can just have better practices and how can we educate all of our team members to understand what we're doing, why we're doing it and get them to be a part of the team as well.

If I was to go to a Cavs game this week, would I notice anything different from last year regarding sustainability?

We’re just getting started. But you already will see better signage on our recycling, trying to get fans to recycle properly. Behind the scenes, we are doing more local sourcing of food with our local chef partners. We also recently hosted a Sustainability Night.

For next season, we are already working on recycling and waste systems that are a lot easier to use and understand.

Do the Cavs have internal sustainability initiatives?

We have had a sustainability committee for about a year and a half, and they got our compost program started. We use Rust Belt Riders.  We compost a lot of food waste and hope to increase that as well in the future.

We also do electronic recycling with our partner MCPC. We just collected over 7,000 pounds of eWaste.

How did you get into such a unique job in the sustainability field?

When I was in college, aside from maybe environmental services, sustainability was not offered, so it’s really exciting to see a lot of students being able to study it now.

I'm a licensed attorney.  I went to Cleveland State law school, and practiced in the nonprofit space. I've always had a passion for sustainability and wanted to learn more about it. I made the pivot and taught myself, focusing on corporate sustainability. Victoria Avi and I started a consulting business about five years ago. We wanted to focus on providing boutique services, working directly with companies to take strategy into action. There was a real need in the market for that.

As for the Cavs, I had been following sports and sustainability for a while as a big interest of mine. I am a sports fan and Europe was far ahead in elevating the platform – it was just more of a focus. Eventually, we started seeing it here in the states in the past few years.

Jobs in sports and sustainability don't come around often, so I was thrilled to see Cavs show a commitment to sustainability by making it a senior level position.

You are appearing on a panel on talent attraction at GCP’s Sustainability Summit on January 23. Can you share a sneak preview?

It’s a great topic, because especially in the sports and entertainment world, there are a lot of organizations out there that young people might be thinking about working at. Companies need to be able to show, ‘Hey, we have these commitments and we're taking action and this is a reason you should come work for us.’ If a potential employee might not be from Cleveland, we have to make something a little more attractive to get someone to move here. We want to attract the top talent, especially with younger people, and they want to work in a culture that aligns with values that they know is making a positive impact.

Register for the Sustainability Summit here