Planet Mark’s Post

⚽ Ready for the Euro 2024 kick-off today? ⚽ As we cheer for our favorite teams and enjoy the game, it's worth noting UEFA's enhanced focus on ESG initiatives this year. UEFA EURO 2024 promises to be most sustainable of all time. Germany has set a new standard - it offers discounted train tickets, free public transport, and rental bikes in cities, along with powering stadiums using renewable energy. Remarkably, no new stadiums were built for the tournament, and €32 million were invested in climate initiatives for the competition. However, there are still some concerns. To date, only Germany, Switzerland, and Portugal pledged to reduce their emissions by shifting from air to rail or road for the group stage. The choice of certain sponsors also poses some questions. So, are UEFA's green initiatives as green as they appear? 🤔 What are your thoughts? #EURO2024 #UEFAEURO2024 #Sustainability #SustainabilityInSports #ESG #CircularEconomy #FootballForGood

Getting cheap interrail tickets out of high school would've been great. EURO 2024 is making that a reality for fans 🚆 UEFA is aiming for the 17th edition of the European Football Champion to meet the highest standards of environmental sustainability 🌍 For the group stage, three regional clusters were created to minimise team and fan travel emissions in between games ✈️ Deutsche Bahn will also offer discounted train tickets to fans to encourage low-carbon transportation in Germany 🎫 For the tournament's unavoidable emissions, UEFA has created a climate fund to finance environmental projects for German amateur clubs ⚡ Such tournaments have immense potential to drive attention to environmental topics and can create waves of climate action 🌊 #euros #uefa #euro2024 #germany #sustainability #football #climatechange #environment #wavezero #climateaction

Happy Euro’s day to all those who celebrate! ️⚽️🎉 We thought we’d bring back our Friday fun fact to honour the occasion…with a football based #didyouknow Sustainability has been a key focus for UEFA in the planning of Euro 2024 in Germany, with an investment of €32m assigned specifically for their ESG strategy. Whilst Germany already had a number of energy-efficient stadiums ready to go, this will be the first tournament where all stadiums and public viewing areas use reusable cups, rail travel has been subsidised to incentivise rail trail between host cities rather than budget airline flights and stadiums will utilise renewable power to support floodlighting and media centre power consumption. There are a whole host of measures being taken and you can read more on the link below however we’re excited to see sustainability becoming a more conscious factor in the events we all love! Have a great weekend! 🌞 chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://lnkd.in/eVfd4mVg #euro2024 #sustainability #climatecrisis #sustainablesport

NEW: Euro 2024 is set to be the "greenest ever" as UEFA and host Germany have made a big effort to promote fan train travel to cut transport emissions. But a failure for the competing teams to do the same is a missed opportunity. UEFA has taken steps to promote sustainable transport this year by clustering group stage matches to reduce travelling, while Deutsche Bahn is offering fans reduced prices on train tickets around the country. New data shows that Europe's leading national football teams competing in Germany this summer could cut their travel emissions by nearly 60% if they avoided flying during the tournament. Over the month-long competition, elite footballers like Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe will pollute seven to nine times more through their transport emissions alone than what the average person emits over a whole month. Germany is the only national team to commit to not flying during the group phase, which means they will save up to 98% of CO2e. This should have been an obvious opportunity for teams to stand out as sustainability leaders, but they are so far failing to lead by example. Read our analysis with Travel Smart Campaign ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eBRSS7Rx UEFA UEFA EURO 2024 Deutsche Bahn Transport & Environment (T&E) France Germanwatch e.V. Schweizerischer Fussballverband (SFV) #Euro2024 #TrainTravel #Rail #SustainableTransport

⚽ UEFA is claiming that EURO2024 is the most sustainable tournament ever. It's of course not true (it's huge, a lot of travelling fans), but you can see that German host cities are doing their best: providing free public transport, offering more veggie food and using existing stadiums. ❌ But, as we at Fossil Free Football pointed out in this report (https://lnkd.in/ebDmcGgH), the EUROs still give a huge platform to polluting sponsors, from fossil fuel state sponsor VisitQatar to the biggest plastic polluter of the world CocaCola. And national team sponsors include airlines, dirty car companies and big fossil fuel financiers. 🛢 ✈ And then, on the day the tournament started (!), QatarAirways announced that they'd be back to sponsor another EUROs. Another Qatari sponsor, this time advertising the most polluting form of travel. Did UEFA plan this announcement last-minute, so that all the pieces looking forward to the 'sustainable EUROs' would have been written already? Possibly, but we make sure they won't get away with it. https://lnkd.in/ehybhKkY 💰 🛢 And the Dutch team? They again sell their platform to the countries' biggest financier of fossil fuels, ING Bank. The commercials are something special... so I wrote this opinion piece. https://lnkd.in/etkz5BMp

However, the German football federation didn’t assure that they would completely avoid flying, despite being the host team of the tournament in the so-called ‘greener’ Eurocup. If they decided to fully avoid flying for the whole competition, they could reduce their total emissions by 97% of CO2e! If all national teams decided to completely avoid planes for their journeys during the group stage, this will result in a 95% savings of CO2e emissions. This amount is equivalent to more than 150 times the annual carbon footprint of an average European!! National teams from countries neighbouring Germany, where shift from ✈️to🚆is possible and reasonable, can reduce their travel emissions to go to their base camp by 94% to 98%. On average, all national teams can reduce their emissions by 95%. Read more👉 https://lnkd.in/e4MgNDNK Deutsche Bahn Transport & Environment (T&E) France Transport & Environment (T&E) UK Germanwatch e.V.  Schweizerischer Fussballverband (SFV)

Allocating significant budget for SDGs and CSR objectives is easier and more practical through fan engagement with FanSupport for leagues, clubs and federations. #SustainableRevenueGeneration #FanEngagement #SustainableDevelopmentGoals United Nations UEFA FIFA LALIGA Lega Serie A Premier League European Club Association (ECA) Bundesliga

The #euro2024 starts tonight. ⚽Throughout this month, will the teams listen to UEFA's efforts to make this the most sustainable tournament to date? Germany, Switzerland and Portugal have committed to avoid flying for some of the matches. The other euro teams can still choose to travel by train instead of by plane during the championship. Learn more about how many travel emissions teams could save if they choose to travel sustainably👉 https://shorturl.at/a35VI #SustainableTravel #FlyLess #RailFirst Transport & Environment (T&E) Transport & Environment (T&E) Deutschland Germanwatch e.V. Deutsche Bahn UEFA EURO 2024

My latest piece in Forbes on UEFA's attempts to make EURO 2024 GmbH the most sustainable football tournament to date. There is a lot being done to reduce carbon emissions and limit fan travel by plane, but will it be enough? "Euro 2024 seems to be a more rational model in tune with today’s climate reality. UEFA is investing 32 million euros in tournament-related sustainability initiatives and the organizing committee is taking significant steps to host a benchmark tournament that reflects all three pillars of ESG. What remains to be seen is whether this tournament can deliver on what is promised and if it will become the standard or the outlier in UEFA’s operations." #sustianability #football #soccer #climateaction #sportsmegaevents Football For Future Fossil Free Football 17 Sport Common Goal Planet League Pledgeball The International Platform on Sport and Development European Football for Development Network European Platform for Sport Innovation (EPSI) Football Supporters Europe https://lnkd.in/epiabSiG

It’s (hopefully) coming home 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️ — but what’s the impact of the Men’s Euros on our climate? Last week I attended the UEFA EURO 2024 match between France 🇫🇷 and Poland 🇵🇱. While technically on holiday, I never take my #sustainability hat off, so I wanted to share some thoughts from the trip: 1. Free regional public transport for ticket holders and discounted international train travel to and from host cities was brilliant for reducing (mainly) match day emissions from fan travel 🚌 2. Sustainability advertising on the LED boards in the 90th minute was great to see - the final minute being a key metaphor as it shows there’s still time to play our part, and is something we did at Desert Vipers last season 🐍 🚨However, there is a long way to go: 1. The 2030 tournament is spread across the continent (as the 2020 one was). This means more fan travel, and more emissions. UEFA’s Climate Fund this year was a fantastic idea; it would be great to expand this to include public transport improvements in host cities (and beyond) in advance of tournaments, to mitigate emissions from increased fan travel. 🌍 2. In addition, UEFA have expanded the tournament from 16 to 24 teams in recent years. If the direction of travel coming from the top continues to be an expansionist one which prioritises quantity over quality, individual match day savings will be cancelled out by the increased number of matches. This makes UEFA’s claim that this is ‘the most sustainable [Men’s] Euros ever’ hard to believe, so there must be full, transparent reporting before such claims can be made 🏟️ There’s a long road ahead, but it’s inspiring to see the progress made so far. I only hope we reach #NetZero before it comes home 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 for the men, otherwise we’ll we waiting far too long.