The upcoming Women's World Cup is expected to generate a city's worth of extra greenhouse gas emissions, but there's a plan to more than make up for that with environmentally friendly initiatives.

The Green Goal 2011 campaign is meant to neutralize the World Cup's environmental footprint while also promoting good stewardship of the Earth to the fans.

"In addition to reducing the impact on climate change, we want to promote the issue of the environment and to encourage the fans to make more environmentally friendly choices in their private lives as well," said Martin Schmied from the Öko-Institut, the Institute for Applied Ecology, in Berlin.

The Öko-Institut developed the Green Goal 2011 concept in partnership with the German Football Federation.

There was a similar program at the Men's World Cup, held five years ago in Germany, but the women's World Cup is a particularly good place to promote environmentally friendly behavior, according to Schmied.

"At the Women's World Cup the fans are different than at a Bundesliga match or at the Men's World Cup," he said. "There are more families, and that means that they're more open to these kinds of topics."

Transportation the biggest issue

The Öko-Institut estimates the tournament will cause about 40,000 tons of CO2 emissions. That is roughly equivalent to what a mid-sized German city produces through energy and heating in a year.

"The biggest chunk of that is transportation. More than 80 percent of those 40,000 tones are caused by getting to and from the host cities. There are only small amount caused by the stadiums and the hotels where the fans will stay. That's the other 20 percent."

The organizers cooperated with the nine match sites to identify various strategies to reduce greenhouse gases.

In Augsburg, for example, they've taken a multi-pronged approach that includes using only renewable energy and providing environmentally options for fans such as local, organic food and a place to lock up bicycles downtown. There won't be any disposable containers or packaging and contracts are only being awarded to companies that produce carbon neutral products and print on recycled paper.

Leading the way

Yet Schmied is the first to concede that these efforts will hardly suffice to close the carbon gap.

"It's clear that no matter how many environmental measures we take, there will be some greenhouse gases produced," he said. "You just can't get to zero, no matter how much you do."

To offset these unavoidable emissions, the plan is to invest in projects that capture carbon or curb emissions in developing countries. Through these efforts the World Cup hopes to go beyond being carbon neutral and actually have a positive net impact on the climate.

The environmental campaign has a price tag of some 750,000 euros ($1 million). The German Football association is paying for most of that, but FIFA, the world's governing football body, is also kicking in some cash for the cause.

It's an investment with definite dividends, according to Schmied.

"We're clearly leading the way," he said. "Only because we worked on the issue in 2006 did UEFA then address the issue at the 2008 European Championship. The environment was also a topic at the 2010 men's World Cup in South Africa and now in Brazil's planning for the 2014 World Cup."

Author: Sarah Faupel / hf
Editor: Nathan Witkop