How The World Cup 2010 Is Thinking Green

Three green initiatives have been launched in order to reduce the carbon footprint of major sporting events such as the imminent 2010 FIFA World Cup hosted in South Africa. These are: Greener lighting for World cup host cities; Green Passport; and offsetting team’s emissions.

The initiatives are supported and funded fully by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNEP and the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), which altogether are contributing $10 million to support these initiatives. The 2010 FIFA World Cup to be hosted this year in South Africa is said to have about eight times the size of the carbon footprint of the World Cup hosted in Germany, mainly due to significant increase in international air travel as well as domestic air travel. This equates to an estimated 2.7 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Greener Lighting Initiative was introduced to bring in solar-powered lighting to busy areas of the city, including billboards, street lights and traffic lights. Not only does this have potential for greater energy & cost savings, (not only environmentally and economically), but it also reduces the stress on the electric grid of the neighbouring cities.


The Green Passport is an initiative set to help people understand the importance of offsetting their carbon emissions while attending the World Cup 2010, the 32-page booklet will be distributed to 100,000 football spectators, as well as people emerging from the busy airports and hotels. The idea is to raise awareness of travelling responsibly with a carbon-friendly attitude whilst in the country. Inside the booklet contains information about host city green goal plans and achievements, restaurants, activities, green accommodation, specific guidelines for sustainable tourism and a carbon footprint calculator to calculate how to reduce ones personal footprint.


The Offsetting Team’s emissions initiative was introduced in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the teams participating, so far only 11 teams that are participating in the World Cup will be offsetting their emissions, but UNEP hopes this will rise while the tournament starts to get underway. The teams participating so far are: Algeria, Cameroon, England, Argentina, Italy, Ghana, Cote d’lvoire, Uruguay, Switzerland, Serbia and the Republic of Korea. The teams’ carbon footprint will include travelling internationally as well as domestically, coach trips to and from matches and accommodation in hotels (totals to around 6,050 tons of greenhouse gas emissions when you start including the officials as well as the team players).


In addition to these initiatives, an SMS campaign has been initiated in partnership with Foneworx and KPMG, to generate funds towards offsetting the 2010 carbon footprint. By texting SMS "GOGREEN" to 34066, a small donation would be made, which would then be put towards carbon offset projects.


We can only commend the efforts that has been put into this event to try and make it as carbon-friendly and as an enjoyable an experience as possible and we hope that if you are travelling to South Africa this year, you help to reduce your own carbon footprint too, for our environment.