Running for a cause (Part II): What sustainability is and why it matters

Last week, fresh off the run­ning of ANSA Mo­tors’s Glow Green 5k in Port-of-Spain, we made a brief men­tion of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the cause for which that event was staged. We’re go­ing to fin­ish the con­ver­sa­tion; but be­fore we do, a word about these events.

I say “events”, but these are se­ri­ous races for many run­ners. Even recre­ation­al run­ners are look­ing to run low­er and low­er times—per­son­al bests at each out­ing. Con­sul­tant Frie­da Mo­hamed, 28, a mem­ber of my pi­lates class, ran the Zion House 5k this past week­end. With a shot of her race re­sults slip and her medal, she post­ed on In­sta­gram, “48 min­utes last 5k, 43 min­utes this 5k. Aim­ing for 38 min­utes next 5k.”

Some mem­bers of the run club I’m a part of (as well as oth­er run clubs) run 5 and/or 10ks every week­end; of­ten on both days, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Two weeks ago we men­tioned a cen­tral Trinidad cou­ple, Ke­ston and Raeann Hud­son, who did a night in­to morn­ing turn­around—back to back 5k runs —on four hours’ sleep.

Com­pa­nies and or­gan­i­sa­tions such as those ded­i­cat­ed to the pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and cure of can­cer and di­a­betes, are in­creas­ing­ly meet­ing fit­ness en­thu­si­asts where they are, while rais­ing aware­ness of their caus­es. It is a fruit­ful mar­riage.

The glow sticks, wash­able glow paint, the en­ter­tain­ing aer­o­bics warmup and the post-race so­ca con­cert vibe at the ANSA Mo­tors event two Sat­ur­days in­ject­ed a lot of fun in­to the run, but there’s a sig­nif­i­cant un­der­ly­ing cor­po­rate pur­pose.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a key strate­gic mea­sure of the en­tire ANSA McAL group, and is dri­ven from the top of the or­gan­i­sa­tion by Group CEO An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III. He makes clear in the group’s Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Da­ta Dis­clo­sure Re­port 2024 that sus­tain­abil­i­ty and fi­nan­cial re­port­ing are yoked, and that they can and should “grow the busi­ness and align long-term busi­ness goals with so­ci­etal im­pact.”

ESG means En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance, and Sab­ga makes clear that it is smart busi­ness, not about green brown­ie points. Every­thing, from bank­ing to bev­er­age bot­tling is be­ing greened up. Ear­li­er this year, ANSA McAL was pre­sent­ed with the Large Com­pa­nies Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Cham­pi­on Award for 2024 from the Eu­ro­pean Busi­ness Cham­ber in Trinidad and To­ba­go (EU­ROCHAMTT).

As of 2024, ANSA Mo­tors had con­vert­ed more than 5,425 ve­hi­cles to CNG since go­ing in­to busi­ness in 2013, and has dri­ven up­take of CNG and elec­tric ve­hi­cles across the group’s en­tire op­er­a­tions. Bar­ba­dos is lead­ing the ac­cel­er­a­tion by per­cent­age, with 22 per cent of ve­hi­cle sales there last year be­ing hy­brid or EV. The au­to­mo­tive arm is in­ten­tion­al in pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, host­ing ten events in 2024. Glow Green was one then, and most re­cent­ly, two week­ends ago.

The tim­ing of the fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty couldn’t be bet­ter, with the start yes­ter­day of the 2025 Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Con­fer­ence, COP30, in Belém in north­east­ern Brazil. Go to our news pages for the lat­est from Guardian Me­dia’s Ryan Ba­choo.

Col­lec­tive­ly, the world is off track in its cli­mate re­duc­tion tar­get, and one of the world’s biggest and most heav­i­ly in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries, the Unit­ed States, has shift­ed to cli­mate-scep­ti­cism since Don­ald Trump as­sumed the pres­i­den­cy. Even bil­lion­aire Bill Gates has wa­tered down his strong ad­vo­ca­cy of green­house gas emis­sion re­duc­tion mea­sures.

ANSA McAL and oth­er en­vi­ron­ment-con­scious com­pa­nies in T&T are work­ing with­in a na­tion­al frame­work known as na­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs). They in­clude “an un­con­di­tion­al com­mit­ment” to re­duce pub­lic trans­porta­tion emis­sions by 30 per cent by 2030, over 2013 lev­els. The coun­try al­so has “a con­di­tion­al com­mit­ment” to re­duce cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions from its three main emit­ting sec­tors (pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­porta­tion, and in­dus­try) by 15 per cent by 2030. This lat­ter com­mit­ment de­pends on re­ceiv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing. The first (the un­con­di­tion­al one) can be tak­en as a non-ne­go­tiable.

Key strate­gies for achiev­ing these goals in­clude pro­mot­ing com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) for pub­lic trans­port, im­ple­ment­ing re­new­able en­er­gy projects like so­lar pow­er, and de­vel­op­ing an up­dat­ed NDC im­ple­men­ta­tion plan.

On a per­son­al lev­el, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is about be­ing con­sis­tent and bal­anced in our ap­pli­ca­tion to our fit­ness, rou­tines and goals. It can mean, for ex­am­ple, not hit­ting the gym for the new year and car­ni­val and tail­ing off by May. Work, trav­el and fam­i­ly com­mit­ments can de­rail rou­tines and chal­lenge sus­tain­abil­i­ty, but we have to work hard to main­tain it.

The oth­er mean­ing of the term is along the lines of what we spoke about ear­li­er—the en­vi­ron­ment. Eco-friend­ly gyms are in­creas­ing in num­ber. More and more of them are look­ing at con­vert­ing the huge amount of en­er­gy we ex­pend on ma­chines there (par­tic­u­lar­ly on spin cy­cles and tread­mills) in­to ki­net­ic en­er­gy. It’s most­ly by the use of ma­chines that, once we start run­ning and cy­cling, stay pow­ered by our en­er­gy in­puts.

Mo­eve Glob­al, an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able en­er­gy and mo­bil­i­ty, es­ti­mates that an hour on an eco-friend­ly sta­tion­ary tread­mill or bi­cy­cle can gen­er­ate up to 220 watts of pow­er. Imag­ine what a full spin class can do.

“The ki­net­ic en­er­gy pro­duced by move­ment on the bi­cy­cle or tread­mill is trans­formed in­to elec­tric­i­ty through a gen­er­a­tor”, Mo­eve says.

“If more elec­tric­i­ty is pro­duced than the ma­chine needs, the ex­cess en­er­gy can be used to pow­er oth­er equip­ment, and even for the light and air con­di­tion­ing of the gym, mak­ing it a process that sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duces the car­bon foot­print of both the equip­ment and the build­ing.”

The day when we pow­er gyms with the en­er­gy from our sweat and toil can’t be far off.