General description of the initiative

As per its quality of European Confederation of Rugby, Rugby Europe is also organizing continental competitions. In the framework of those events, the administrators of the confederation have identified two leverages to decrease its global carbon footprint:

(1) Teams travel and officials: for obvious operating reasons, it is usually necessary to have the athletes flying, match officials and other officials in the host country.

(2) Local operations: organizing a sporting event has a non-neutral impact in terms of carbon emission.

After extensive feasibility analysis, it was decided to update Rugby Europe’s tender process and the structure of its competitions: since a couple of seasons, the priority is made to do the utmost to find hosts willing to host at the same dates both a male and a female event. In addition to helping us mediatize women’s rugby, this has allowed the Confederation to reduce the global carbon footprint.

Results

The results were only beneficial for the European Confederation of Rugby. Indeed, shifting towards a more sustainable approach of operations have permitted to greatly reduce general operating costs whilst fostering external synergies with partners and most of all, a noticeable reduction of environmental impact of operations. All this without a single euro of budget.