Sustainability assessment of large sporting venues
This paper assesses the sustainability performance of large sporting venues to evaluate how different technologies and policies have been implemented to make them more sustainable. This project also considers the impacts which these technologies and policies have on certain sustainability aspects, being the natural environment, non-renewable energy sources, prosperity, human health, and social well-being. This was used to determine the benefits which these techniques have on sustainability performance.
The research was divided into two different sections in order to uncover the facts relating sustainability in stadiums. The first section of research is conducted on stadiums by reading online news articles, tours, and studying various environmental and sustainability reports. The second section researches into possible sustainability assessment methods through published work and journals found regarding stadia sustainability.
It was found that many of the larger stadiums have adopted sustainability practices to ensure their stadium is more efficient, reducing energy usage, consuming less water, increasing the amounts of recycling and reusing, using less materials, and becoming more durable. This has allowed them to ultimately reduce their GHG emissions and increase their sustainability performance.
Furthermore, an assessment of the technologies and policies was done in order to determine the impacts of these techniques. The method developed by SBAT on stadia meant a set of criteria and indicators were defined in order to assess the impacts of certain technologies and policies on the environment, economy and society. The analysis showed that stadiums are becoming more conscience about their impacts and trying to increase the benefits of these techniques, consistently though all sustainability criteria, as well as reduce the negative effects.
Additionally, a comparison between the stadia was done to analyse how the amount of emissions varied when taking into account the stadium capacity, area size, and the amount of events hosted in the stadium. Research was also done on potential future and alternative technologies, such as 4G AstroTurf, Solar spray, and footstep power. It can be concluded that stadia are trying to reduce their GHG emissions and ultimately are looking to increase their sustainability performance now and in the future.