The sustainability of the Women's Euros

My name is Drew; I am an Apprentice Waste Prevention Officer for the Council. I have previously written a blog on the waste football and sports contribute to the UK and how they try to avoid as much waste as possible. I started looking into the ways in which UEFA have contributed to avoiding waste throughout the Women’s Euros 2025, this being a sport that attracts a lot of people worldwide which will ultimately come at a wasteful cost should interventions and plans not be in the place.

It didn’t take long for me to find strategies and plans that included avoiding waste and protecting the environment. UEFA had created a ‘Sustainability in Action’ plan that was devised for this year’s women’s tournament, within this action plan they mentioned the Environmental, Social and Governance strategy that had previously been created. This strategy embodied three goals reducing environmental impact where possible, safeguarding and honouring the rights of individuals of all ages and nationalities and lastly, embracing the transparent, responsible and accountable practices throughout all operations.

The environmental goal had states 3 areas of action defined throughout the strategy; these were climate action, sustainable infrastructure and circular economy.

Climate action had been sought to reduce the carbon impact of spectators, organisers, teams and guests. This all being done by giving ticket holders free public transport, reduced parking at stadiums, match schedules were planned to reduce the travel of teams and when required to travel, this had to be done by train or coach for all teams.

Sustainable infrastructure embodies energy and reducing the electricity consumption, to also switch to renewable energy as well as reducing the venues’ consumption of water. These were actioned by using environmentally friendly generators for electricity and to ensure the electricity at stadiums come from renewable sources. To reduce water consumption, this was actioned by the usage of grey water where possible.

Circular economy topic underpins reduce, reuse, recycle and recovery where they noted, throughout the tournament less waste would be produced, the life cycle of products would be maximised, waste would be optimised this referring to recycling and finally, waste from the tournament will be converted into energy. These points are all reinforced by ensuring that products in the stadium have no packaging or limited packaging where needed, the use of environmentally friendly or reusable cups, teams were also requited to apply the principles of a circular economy within their base camps, the uniform, goods and materials would also be used second hand once the tournament is over and leftover food would be donated.

It isn’t until I started working in waste that I began associating everything with waste and the impact of these things and how impactful events such as this would be if there weren’t any interventions and actions in place like the ones above.

What are the ways that we can follow the practice of UEFA? We can contribute to a circular economy by buying and selling on sites such as Vinted, eBay, Depop, Freegle and the many other resale sites available. You can also contribute to a circular economy by increasing the longevity of your product by repairing items yourself or taking them to repair cafes.

For sports to be enjoyed by everyone and in a holistic approach, games not limited to those of major tournaments need to speak out loudly on how they are minimising their waste and their impact on the environment.