Alayna Burns, a senior on the Duke Field Hockey team and alum of ACE in Colorado 2022, was inspired by her field experience in Colorado as a means to bring sustainability initiatives back to Duke Athletics through her ACE Action Plan. During her ACE program, Burns and four other Duke student-athletes spent three weeks in southwestern Colorado working with several nonprofits dedicated to environmental conservation and sustainable agriculture. Burns and her ACE teammates contributed to building mountain biking trails, restoring marshland, and learning how to weed crops and regenerate native plants.
After completing her ACE program and recognizing broader student-athlete interest in sustainability, Burns actively pursued measures to establish meaningful service initiatives at Duke, inspired by her positive experiences in Colorado.
“Discovering through ACE that others in Duke Athletics felt passionate about protecting our planet inspired me to continue us all working together back at Duke and explore just how many others at Duke Athletics may also share this interest in the climate comeback”
Burns knew that she wanted to “make a movement, not just a moment” with her remaining time at Duke. Thus, pairing up with fellow ACE alums allowed Burns to create the Duke Sustainable Athletics Group (DSAG), an organization of student-athletes dedicated to leading on-campus sustainability-inspired action. DSAG has hosted a recurring and successful shoe drive that has collected over 591 shoes for recycling or donation. Most recently, Burns and DSAG hosted a “Bleed Blue, Live Green” field hockey game where fans engaged in a sports equiptment drive for the Boys & Girls Club of Durham before the game, enjoyed a fun sustainabilty education half-time game, and shared a zero-waste tailgate afterwards where families engaged in the waste-sorting process.
Burns emphasized that, throughout this process, it took not only dedication but also collaboration to make her Action Plan a reality. Through working with her ACE in Colorado teammates, fellow student-athletes, and Duke Athletics staff, Burns learned that to make actionable progress, sometimes she “needed to start with one step (or shoe) at a time.”
“The best relationships don’t form from just sharing a sport but sharing an interest, a passion, a dream, an experience, and a feeling.”
Burns has come to realize when reflecting on why her Colorado acemates have been able to be such a good team back at Duke that it was their united purpose around sustainability that brought the group together.
Burns’s Action Plan experience has only inspired her to do more at Duke and beyond. She was able to attend the Green Sports Alliance & GOAL conference in Seattle this past summer on behalf of Duke Athletics, connecting with professionals in the field to bring back more green solutions to Duke. Burns has paved the way for Duke’s recent decision to become a member of the Green Sports Alliance, an organization uniting professional and collegiate organizations to leverage the power of sports to drive meaningful impact.
As a product of her work, Duke Athletics and Sustainable Duke hosted their first Climate Commitment Game on November 2nd against Wake Forest. This also served as an opportunity to relaunch the Zero-Waste initiatives that were paused during the pandemic. The game was supported by volunteers from DSAG and diverted 600 lbs of compost from the waste stream normally seen at football games.
“In this awesome collaboration between Athletics and Sustainable Duke in creating the Green Devil experience, I hope our strategies lead to effective and cost-efficient ways for Duke Athletics to continue to grow the Green Games model.”
Recently, Burns was nominated for the Young Athlete of the Year award as part of the BBC’s Green Sport Awards which “celebrate individuals and organizations from across the globe who are actively contributing to a more sustainable future through their sporting profile and practices.” Burns finished as a finalist for the award.
Burns’s time at ACE in Colorado and beyond has impacted the rest of her college trajectory. In focusing on bringing sustainability initiatives to student-athletes and Duke Athletics as a whole, we can see how Burns’s passion for “going for green” is contagious and will continue to spread past her time at Duke.
To hear more of Alayna’s Burns’s story in her own words, listen to the Duke Athletics podcast “Bleed Blue, Live Green, Play Red Hot.”