ero CO2 emissions by 2040 and a 50% reduction by 2030: this is the long-term (but not even that long-term) goal of the United Nations Race to Zero campaign. The far from rosy forecasts that emerged from the recent COP26 in Glasgow, the UN Climate Change Conference, have finally led to a mobilisation on the environment theme that has called together companies, cities, regions, financial, educational and even sporting institutions.
Together with the Sports for Climate Action project, the Race to Zero campaign was in fact signed by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, UEFA, FIFA, Premier League, Formula 1, Formula E, BBC sport and various sports clubs and associations from around the world.
The premises – apart from the initial delay of the call to action on sustainability and the respect of the environment – are therefore very good and the involvement of the sports world is certainly necessary and hopefully impactful: but will we really be able to see events without massive use of disposable plastic any time soon? And how can the sports industry join the process of awareness and ‘green’ revolution that the Earth requires of us?
The sport industry’s consumption: stadiums
After all, sport as a personal activity to take the pressure off work and keep fit is about as green as you can get: a Sunday spent on the couch in front of a TV series obviously involves higher consumption than a bike ride in the park. Things get more complicated when the ‘private’ sporting dimension turns into a mass public event. Think of a Champions League match, an ATP final, the Monaco Grand Prix or any match, race or competition that attracts thousands of people.
Stadiums and sports arenas have a considerable energy impact: a stadium consumes approximately 25,000 kWh during a single football match, about 10 times the average annual energy consumption of a family in Lugano.
And while it is true that a fan who goes to the stadium consumes up to 35% less energy than a fan who watches the game from the comfort of home, it remains undeniable that the fan does not and especially cannot always choose sustainable types of transport to reach the stadium. From this point of view, we found well-chosen the offer of the public transport company of Como which during the last football season offered free bus tickets to the fans of Calcio Como 1907 travelling to the stadium for all the Italian Serie B home matches.
The best way to achieve climate positivity in sport starts with the stadiums. A good example to follow is the Kaohsiung World Stadium in Taiwan, completed in 2009 well ahead of the current trend in renewables: the roof of the structure, which seats 55,000 people, is composed of 9,000 photovoltaic panels that cover 75 per cent of the energy required for the matches. That is not everything. Between one match and the next, when the lights are switched off, the stadium designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyoo Ito incorporates and sells more than one million KWh of solar energy per year to third parties.
Innovation and creativity in the service of sustainability
The discussion cannot obviously be limited to the electricity bill. The alliance between sport and the environment can be found in the venues that welcome athletes and fans (keep an eye on the recent ‘container architecture’ of padel clubs, the tennis-derived sport that is conquering the world and that can be practised inside new structures quick to assemble and having zero environmental impact), but also in the social initiatives developed by the clubs themselves. A concrete example of this is the partnership between Juventus Football Club and One Tree Planted, whereby 100 trees are planted in areas at risk of deforestation for every goal scored by the Juventus club.
A similar partnership to that of Juventus has also been set up by Liverpool Football Club, which in recent years has been committed to reforestation and animal protection; it is no coincidence, in this regard, that the English team won the 2021 edition of the Green League, a parallel competition to the Premier League.
Conceived by the Football Association in collaboration with Sport Positive Summit, the United Nations and BBC Sport – the Green League ranking is not governed by wins or draws but by scores awarded to clubs based on their commitment to initiatives related to, for example, energy efficiency, waste management or biodiversity.
But can one follow the course set by COP26 with creativity? Of course you can!
For example, the London-based creative agency Accept & Proceed designed Block 70, a basketball court in Belgrade for the Nike brand using 20,000 recycled trainers, for its Move to Zero campaign.
Looking at other sports, it is worth mentioning the technological development of tennis balls that are environmentally friendly as they have no pressurised air inside them and, as regards cricket, for example, the adoption of bats made from bamboo cane instead of willow wood, a raw material that is certainly more valuable.
We close this roundup by moving on to volleyball.
GoodNet is a project sponsored by the World Volleyball Federation (FIVB) and the Ghost Fishing Foundation that for some years now has been aiming to recover fishing nets abandoned in the oceans, dangerous for marine fauna, to be transformed into volleyball nets to be installed on beaches.
A virtuous example: Forest Green Rovers
Returning to football, the Forest Green Rovers club is an emblematic and certainly unique case.
The focus on a truly environmentally sustainable policy of its chairman, Dale Vince, has led a minor English team, but recently promoted to League One (England’s third professional league), to take the podium with respect to environmental issues. Official recognition, first from FIFA and then from the United Nations, among the many awards and certificates received by the team over the past 10 years, are proof that a green revolution is also possible from the bottom up; in this case from Nailsworth, a small town of 7000 souls nestled in the green hills of Gloucestershire.
A green approach that fits perfectly with the place, the team name and the colours of the jersey, on which in past years the sponsor Sea Sheperd, an organisation actively involved in the defence of the seas, has been featured. The choice put in place by Dale Vince, not by chance already founder and president of Ecotricity (a renewable energy company), is a real political operation – in some ways a little extreme – to shed light on all the transformation possibilities available to a football team. Which ones?
The current uniform is made exclusively of recycled materials: a mix of coffee grounds and recycled PET bottles. But that’s not all: Vince has mandated the introduction of only one jersey per year, precisely to reduce consumption starting with the clothing.
Forest Green Rovers’ facility, The New Lawn, has enabled the club to achieve carbon neutral certification; the stadium uses 100% renewable energy from Ecotricity. More than 10% comes from photovoltaic panels covering the south stand of the modest 5141-seat facility, and there are electric car rechargers outside to encourage the use of more sustainable cars. The playing field is fertilised with natural fertilisers and irrigated thanks to a rainwater harvesting system (certainly an exploitable resource in one of Europe’s rainiest nations).
The president’s visionary plan, however, goes further: a new stadium made entirely of wood is in the pipeline, the EcoPark, designed by the archistar Zaha Hadid, a revolutionary figure who passed away a few years ago and who designed, among other works, the futuristic Al-Janoub stadium in Qatar, which will host the upcoming 2022 World Cup.
Extreme company policy, as we said: Forest Green Rovers is also the world’s first entirely vegan team; all members, to the dismay of the butcher from Nailsworth who was the club’s official supplier until the autumn of 2015, follow an entirely plant-based diet.
The green future: what more can be done?
The green revolution in sport can and must come, as we have seen, from saving energy in facilities, implementing waste separation systems, and exploiting recycled plastic and reclaimed materials for athletes’ clothing.
However, clubs and the national and international organisational networks that coordinate them could become the main actors of a green acceleration. How?
On a contractual level in their dealings with their sponsors, with equal offers between competitors, clubs could choose those that comply with certain policies.
The inclusion of eco-sustainable criteria to be respected in licensing systems to compete nationally and internationally still seems a long way off but, starting from a different point of view, it would be desirable that the achievement of a whole series of goals in line with these policies could bring economic advantages for clubs that manage to reach them or, for instance, benefit them in the criteria for the distribution of revenues from TV rights.
Based on everyday examples, leagues and federations could decide to reward with financial incentives clubs that reduce the issuance of paper tickets or the use of plastic cups in the indoor bars of their stadiums or sports arenas.
Suggestions could then come from the fans themselves, so as to strengthen the idea of community around sports clubs, or even better from the world’s most influential athletes.
It is certain, however, that only if the awareness-raising process on the topic of sustainability reaches the widest possible audience together with incentives provided by sporting regulations we can really hope that the world of sport will achieve great results by 2030.
