An Executive Voices Blog by Ester Fonseca-Patriarco, Senior Sustainability Manager at NASCAR

NASCAR was founded in 1948 and, for more than 75 years, it has evolved alongside advances in technology and innovation. As we look toward the future of our sport, protecting the places where we live, work, and race is essential to NASCAR’s long-term legacy.

To build an effective sustainability strategy, it is important to reflect both the realities of your business and the expectations of your consumers. In 2023, NASCAR IMPACT was launched to meet the evolving needs of our communities, so that NASCAR racing and its fans can thrive today and for years to come. Recently, we released our 2025 NASCAR IMPACT Report, which highlights the three pillars of our platform: community building, healthy environments, and STEM excellence.

Before publicly launching our healthy environments initiatives, however, we spent several years measuring the emissions associated with our facilities, events, and race operations. That process established a baseline and helped us identify where we could make the greatest difference. As a result, we organized our strategy around three key areas where we could measure our progress: energy, waste and circularity, and carbon measurement.

Energy emerged as an early priority because it accounts for a significant share of our operational footprint. Unlike many sports organizations, NASCAR owns and operates 15 racetracks, giving us substantial control over the facilities, infrastructure, and energy systems that support our business. That level of operational influence made energy a logical place to focus and ultimately led to our first public sustainability goal: achieving net-zero operating emissions across NASCAR-owned facilities and assets by 2035.

Today, we are advancing that goal through investments in renewable electricity, energy efficiency projects, and electrification infrastructure. Additionally, we continue to explore lower-carbon fuels and other technologies that can further reduce emissions across our operations.

Waste was another area where we saw both environmental and business opportunities. Across events and facilities, we are working to reduce what we send to landfill through recycling, composting, reuse programs, and other circular solutions that keep materials in use longer. We recently expanded our focus beyond recycling by setting a goal to implement waste reduction plans across all NASCAR events by 2030. One example is our food recovery program. Following a successful 2024 pilot that composted 67,097 pounds of organics and food scraps, we expanded the program to all NASCAR Cup Series race weekends at NASCAR-owned tracks in 2025. The results of that expansion will be shared in this year’s NASCAR IMPACT Report.

Another area of focus that guided our strategy was carbon measurement. In 2022, NASCAR completed the sport’s first comprehensive carbon baseline. Understanding our environmental footprint is the foundation for meaningful progress and examining that data allowed us to move beyond assumptions and focus efforts where they matter most. In fact, that work helped us better understand the emissions associated with our organization and allowed us to improve data collection as we prepare to publish an emissions reduction plan.

We recognize that many emissions sources exist beyond our core operations. Like most companies, a significant portion of our carbon footprint resides within our value chain. This includes activities such as purchased goods, logistics, industry and fan travel, and merchandise.

This challenge may sound familiar: merchandise, apparel, and promotional products represent an important opportunity to better collaborate with suppliers on future improvements. Having accurate data allows us to identify meaningful opportunities for reduction, and we believe transparency is important in order to work closely with partners to improve our sustainability efforts at every level.

For companies beginning their own sustainability journey, my advice is simple: start with the data, focus on what is material to your business, and don’t wait for perfection before taking action. Sustainability strategies evolve over time and what matters most is establishing a clear direction, measuring your progress, and building partnerships that enable long-term success.

Having clear goals signals to partners and suppliers where opportunities exist. In many cases, those relationships can help accelerate progress while opening doors to new revenue streams, sponsorships, products, and services.

As we continue this work, we welcome opportunities to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and innovators who can help us accelerate progress and bring new solutions to the table.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is the sanctioning body for the number one form of motorsports in the United States and owner of 14 of the nation’s major motorsports entertainment facilities. NASCAR sanctions races in three national series (NASCAR Cup Series™, NASCAR Xfinity Series™, and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series™), four international series (NASCAR Brasil Sprint Race, NASCAR Canada Series, NASCAR Mexico Series, NASCAR Whelen Euro Series), four regional series (ARCA Menards Series, ARCA Menards Series East & West and the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour) and a local grassroots series (NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series). Based in Daytona Beach, Florida, with offices in five cities across North America, NASCAR sanctions more than 1,200 races annually in 11 countries and more than 30 U.S. states.