Sustainable travel for your away trip

Last year’s sustainability report found that travel can account for up to 90% of the overall carbon footprint of football clubs and organisations. When you think about it, that is a huge number, and the fact that the statistic is purely based on football indicates a significant challenge in wider the sporting world when organising sustainable travel for your away trip.

Many elite clubs are doing their best to try and address the issue of sustainability. Brighton and Hove Albion has offered free public transport to fans within a designated travel zone and Arsenal Football Club has provided cycling provision for staff moving between sites. Further afield in Spain, Real Betis partnered with Lime, the world’s largest shared electric vehicle company.

However, in this particular blog we want to look at the issue of sustainability when travelling to and from away games and tournaments. Look, sports teams simply have to get to their away games so ruling out carbon emissions completely is simply impossible. However, there are things that can be done to ease the stress on the environment.

Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that there are coach companies who have put their green foot forward. One of our favourites is the Big Green Coach. Every single one of the company’s services is carbon neutral and it’s also committed to sponsoring and protecting five square foot of Amazonian Rainforest for 10 years for every customer who books travel.

For those trips a little further there’s always trains. Network Rail in particular has promised to cut carbon dioxide emissions so that the railway is carbon neutral by 2045 in Scotland and by 2050 in the rest of Britain. Public transport in itself is a great way to manage sustainability for your away day, as effectively, the service is going to run with or without your team – it makes total sense!

However, let’s also address the elephant in the room. One form of transport that should be avoided if at all possible is air travel. A study carried out in 2018 found that 895 tonnes of CO2 had been release due to air travel alone, a number that will have only increased since then (excluding the pandemic of course).

Look, sustainable travel in sport is by no means a quick fix. But as an industry we can definitely do more and here at sportshotels.com we want to work with our partners and customers to ensure we’re all doing the best we can.