NASCAR Goes Green?

Now, I should admit up front that I am no NASCAR or Indy 500 fan, and that I have a very limited understanding of the sport and what goes on at these events. What I do know is that race car driving is not only the single most popular spectator sport in America, but that it is also not exactly what I would call “environmentally friendly.” Enter Leilani Munter. I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago and heard the following interview with Leilani, a professional race car driver. As it turns out, not only is she one of a mere handful of women in this male dominated sport, but she is also an ardent environmentalist committed to doing everything she can to “green up” this carbon intensive activity.

Listen to the NPR interview here

Basically, Leilani has been an environmentalist her whole life. She is a longtime animal lover and vegetarian, and she didn’t even get into race car driving until after receiving a degree in biology (specializing in ecology) from UCSD. When she did finally get behind the wheel, it didn’t take her long to come to the conclusion that her environmental views were somewhat at odds with her new profession. However, instead of abandoning race car driving altogether, she decided to use her platform as an important figure in the nation’s number one spectator sport to help move it in a new direction. As Leilani says, “It's a hugely popular sport, and… you can't leave behind a hundred million race fans.”

Since she started speaking out, Leilani has run into mixed reactions. “Some people were telling me that they… wanted to see more people talking about our environmental problems on the racing circuit. But then, there were also others that were… very negative and kind of saying I was brainwashed by Al Gore.” Even with the mixed reaction, Leilani is hopeful, saying that “the important thing that I tried to look at is that I was getting them talking about it… to go into a NASCAR forum and see them arguing and talking about global warming and talking about climate change… Those kinds of things weren't necessarily taking place in NASCAR forums before.”

But Leilani's general awesomeness doesn't end there. In addition to bringing awareness of the green movement to racing fans, Leilani is also opening the way for smaller, green businesses to advertise in the racetrack. The way sponsorships usually work (based on my extensive research ie. Google) is that one major company will sponsor a car, meaning that each car becomes a giant billboard for that one company. Leilani’s vision is to buck that trend by breaking her car up into several smaller sponsorships placements that mid-size green companies can afford, and to have the main spot on the race car reserved as a call to action message for race fans: “One of the messages I wanted to send was about CFL light bulbs, and I would like to run a race car that has a CFL label on the side of it… And then the next race we'd run something different. It might be a race car that says, no more paper, no more plastic, and then I can talk about the plastic bags and how many of them aren't getting recycled.”

And as if all that wasn't enough, Leilani is also trying to take her green message directly to the fans. Apparently, another aspect of the race car world that I was unaware of is that each driver gets some space at the racetrack to sell their merchandise. Usually, this means action figures, jerseys, hats and bobble head dolls. Not at Leilani’s booth. “I'd like to have a little eco-education center… so where the other drivers are selling their hats and… little race cars, I'm going to be selling CFL light bulbs and canvas grocery bags and just giving them tips on things that they can do to go green.”

While I still don’t personally understand what people find entertaining about cars going around a circle for five hours, and while there is absolutely no escaping the fact that car racing will be one of the most carbon intensive sports for some time to come, I can’t help but be inspired by one woman’s efforts to bring her passion to her work in a way that will (hopefully) get all of us a little closer to a sustainable planet.