Leo Messi poses with Join the Planet cleat and t-shirt.

COURTESY OF JOIN THE PLANET
Leo Messi has scored over 800 goals throughout his illustrious career, including two in a 5-0 win against Orlando City recently. Now, he is set to score a goal that will count for the entire planet. Argentina’s World Cup-winning number 10 is the face of a new initiative with environmental organization Join the Planet and sustainable materials brand Karün which will use the star’s “global influence to attract attention and generate resources for conservation projects.”

The first part of the collaboration between Messi and these organizations launched live on Twitch at noon ET on March 1st. It is a “first-of-its-kind collectable sculpture of Messi’s renowned soccer cleat,” which according to the press release “aims to redefine environmental value creation as we know it.”

The sculpture is made from recycled materials that were collected from Patagonia, Indonesia, China, Thailand, India and Ghana. Most of the material is nylon from discarded fishing nets, recycled polypropylene from discarded ropes and bottle caps, and recycled fiberglass. All of it has been collected in an ethical manner, sorted, and shipped to the production facility. The collectible cleat will be available for purchase later in March and the proceeds of the sale will go towards conservation and regeneration of the Paraná River which runs along Messi’s home city of Rosario.

The Parties Involved

Messi

Lionel Messi is the key figure in this initiative. According to Thomas Kimber, Director of Join the Planet Foundation and Founder & CEO of Karün, as Messi reaches the later stages of his career he is beginning to look at his legacy beyond sports. Moreover, he understands his capacity to positively influence billions of people and is looking to extend said influence to the realm of environmental sustainability. To that end, Messi said, “with effort and a sense of community, we can take care of the planet.”

Kimber says it was natural to approach Messi to lead this project as he is a leader on the field and someone who is associated with a team-oriented approach. Kimber notes that “Messi’s involvement means reaching millions of people who are not part of the environmental discussion.”

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The hope is that Messi will become a symbol of how sports can have an impact on climate change, creating meaningful actions and solutions, not just more sustainability rhetoric. It is expected that Messi’s participation will also inspire other athletes and entertainment figures to join the cause.

Join the Planet

Join the Planet is a brand that collects and repurposes discarded and waste materials into new products. The proceeds from these products are then used by its eponymous foundation which is “dedicated to the protection and regeneration of nature through work with local communities.”

According to its website, the mission of Join the Planet is to facilitate relationships between key public figures and communities “to generate a positive impact on the planet.” By partnering with well known public figures such as Leo Messi, Join the Planet aims to “amplify its reach and inspire global participation.”

Discarded rope and netting.

Discarded rope and netting used for the Messi cleat sculpture.

COURTESY OF JOIN THE PLANET

Karün

Founded by Thomas Kimber, Karün is a B Corp Certified, Patagonia-based company focused on transitioning towards a regenerative economy. The company seeks to protect nature by learning from indigenous wisdom and works alongside local communities to help people live in harmony with the natural environment. Its name comes from the indigenous Mapuche language of Chile and means to be nature.

Karün builds sunglasses from recycled and repurposed materials using a regenerative supply chain model. The Patagonian company was key in helping collect the materials to build the Messi soccer cleat sculpture. Moreover, using blockchain technology, it has established a traceability system that allows consumers to see the collection and production processes of the product they are purchasing and its associated carbon footprint. The same technology was used for the sculpture, so all interested parties can track both the supply chain and the carbon emissions of the artwork.

Disclosing collection and production information is essential to transparency and is part of building the value chain from the bottom up. Kimber notes that the company must show how much CO2 is emitted by making each product, saying “we cannot cover our eyes from that reality, we need to make it public.” Only then can they raise sustainable consciousness and actively work to reduce emissions.

Fundación Rosario (Rosario Foundation)

The final organization involved in this project is a private-public cooperation that aims to strengthen the identity of the city of Rosario by, amongst other things, restoring and regenerating the city’s natural ecosystem. Fundación Rosario is in charge of managing the local element of the Join the Planet campaign to regenerate the Paraná river.

President of the Fundación Rosario, Romulo Bertoya, notes that “the objective of this project is to reduce water pollution generated by the socio-productive development of the Ludueña Basin that flows into the Paraná River and contribute to the regeneration of the social fabric linked to it.”

Bertoya understands the magnitude of this project, stating, “we have the opportunity to generate a paradigm shift in the way we approach the city’s problems, considering the community and nature as protagonists; raising awareness and calling for the active participation of citizens in synergy and in a systemic way, so that the impact has greater incidence and is sustainable.”

Join the Planet and Fundación Rosario have been organizing local community clean-ups of the river for over a year and they will be reforesting the city and the degraded areas along the river with indigenous plants. The work will involve children from the local sports academies, raising the environmental awareness of the city’s sports youth.

The Paraná River

Cleaning and regenerating the ailing Paraná River is a must. At just over 3000 miles, the Paraná — which is often compared to the Mississippi — is the second longest river in South America, and a major hub for transport, fishing and international commerce. It traverses southern Brazil, northern Argentina, southeastern Bolivia and most of Uruguay, and runs alongside Messi’s hometown of Rosario, before merging into the Río de la Plata and emptying into the Atlantic Ocean next to Buenos Aires.

Unfortunately, in recent years the Paraná has been blighted by a multitude of problems. According to expert in environmental impact Adriana Anzolín, one of the main issues facing the river is deforestation along its islands and riverbanks. These key wetland areas are natural sponges of humidity, and are part of a feedback cycle which helps bring atmospheric rivers from the Amazon rainforest to the plains of northern Argentina. As farmers drain these wetlands (and those in the rainforest) to raise cattle, the land’s ability to capture water and create the humidity necessary for it to rain decreases. Moreover, deforestation destroys local biodiversity, ruining animal habitats, eliminating vital top soil nutrients and decreasing the wetlands capacity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

ARGENTINA-PARAGUAY-PARANA RIVER-CLIMATE-DROUGHT

Aerial view of an almost dry arm of the Parana River.

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
On top of this, the recently concluded La Niña cycle, in combination with climate change, created an unprecedented multiyear drought which left exposed riverbeds, severe water shortages, and limited fishing opportunities.

As a vital artery for agricultural trade, the Paraná River is regularly used to haul Argentina’s agricultural exports out to sea. The constant exposure to freight vessels contaminates the river’s waters, which are further polluted by pesticide and fertilizer runoff from nearby farms and industrial runoff from factories in cities along the river like Campana, Zarate and Rosario.

Anzolín says it is especially common to find glyphosate runoff in the water, which a study in the National Library of Medicine said “can seriously affect normal cell development,” and can “induce behavioral and motor disorders.”

Efforts to clean up the river are already underway, but a systematic shift across nations will be required to fully restore the river to a healthy state and keep local communities safe.

The Long-Term Vision

Creating the meaningful change needed to adapt to the climate crisis will take more than sustainable artwork and the restoration of one river. However, it is clear that Join the Planet’s core objective is to create a link between sustainability and climate change issues and the sports and entertainment sector.

When building Join the Planet Thomas Kimber says one of the key things he and his partners looked at were the most followed people on social media. He says, “all of them are a reflection of what society is interested in,” be it sports figures like Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lebron James, or entertainment figures like Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift.

Messi left cleat sculpture

An image of the Messi left cleat sculpture, made from discarded products.

COURTESY OF JOIN THE PLANET
Thomas sees the opportunity that lies in tying the most relevant issue facing humanity to the subjects that touch people’s day-to-day lives. He feels that currently those subjects are not reaching a wide enough audience, which is why he is trying to tie them to sectors, like sports, that create passion. He says that “if you can combine passion with purpose, the impact it can make can be unprecedented in history,” and notes that “if we are going to make a change in society we need the masses involved.”

Naysayers will rightly point out that Messi, like most of the aforementioned stars, lives an unsustainable lifestyle that involves many private flights and an ambassadorship for a petrostate which perpetuates the climate crisis. However, what is inarguable is that Messi is one of the only people in the world whose influence can reach every corner of the globe. His willingness to engage in a new environmental campaign shows a recognition on his part that his legacy must extend beyond the game of soccer to issues that the majority of the globe are concerned with. Frankly, Messi’s involvement in environmental sustainability is the potential game changer the climate sector has been looking for: a global superstar who cares and advocates for sustainable change. What matters now is that he, and his fellow superstars, commit to the cause and captain the fight against the climate crisis.

To Barcelona, PSG, Argentina and more recently, Inter Miami fans, Leo Messi has always been a figure of hope. He has gotten his teams out of dark places over and over again, providing goals and assists in the most critical moments. Now he is bringing hope to his hometown and to the world using his influence to help raise funds and awareness that can help restore nature.

One left cleat sculpture will not solve our environmental issues, but in a time of need it is hard to imagine a better left cleat to ask for help from than Leo Messi’s.