With global sport emitting as much as Poland or Spain, major events including Sevens must ‘double down’ on sustainability
- The travel needed to get to such events generate 90 per cent of the emissions, says Great Britain sevens player Jamie Farndale
- Also guilty are older venues that do not use renewable energy, and the tonnes of food, packaging and plastics involved
International sports events need to double down on their sustainability efforts to reduce the “huge negative environmental impact” they generate, according to Great Britain rugby sevens player Jamie Farndale.
Speaking at the Hong Kong Sport & Sustainability Summit ahead of last weekend’s Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens, Farndale said that, according to his research, professional sport emits 350 million tonnes of greenhouse gases – the same amount as countries such as Poland or Spain.
Of the 40,000 sell-out crowd at the weekend’s tournament in Hong Kong, 42 per cent of spectators came from overseas, and Farndale said 90 per cent of emissions were generated by people travelling to such events.
“The way that things are being approached at the moment, it’s about making 5 per cent reductions, 10 per cent reductions [in one’s carbon footprint],” said Farndale, who is a sustainability ambassador for Scottish Rugby and is studying for a Master’s degree in the subject at Cambridge University.
“My point isn’t that that is not the right approach; if anything, we need to double down on that.”
