Towards sustainable design in the sports and leisure industry

The sports and leisure products industry, like most of the consumer products manufacturing sector has been operating very much on a disposable commodity basis. Indeed, many sports products require high levels of energy to manufacture, they exploit low-paid labour in the developing world, and they are conceived typically with little consideration of recyclability and reusability, or sustainability in general. It has not been of major concern to this $500 billion global industry to date. This paper puts forward the view that this industry will have to embrace the latest advances in the fields of technology and engineering in order to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable in the 21st century.