A greener and environmentally aware tournament

In 2008 Scotland hosted the Home Internationals for the first time in four years at the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Muirfield, East Lothian. The event is one of the most prestigious and high profile in the UK amateur golf calendar, attracting the best of amateur golfers from Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. Prior to the event the SGU was awarded £5,000 from EventScotland to support the costs of an Environmental Event Plan.


The aim was for the 2008 Home Internationals to become the Scottish Golf Union’s (SGU) first ever official ‘Green’ event, where they would deliver a greener and environmentally aware tournament and create a template and guidelines which both they, and other golf organisations, could follow for future events. Working in partnership with EventScotland and the Scottish Golf Environment Group (SGEG), the SGU was able to deliver a number of key initiatives which would change the way they would run their events in the future.


As a result of the extensive work undertaken by the SGU and SGEG during the planning stages for the 2008 Home Internationals, the SGU Green Event Guidelines were produced. These guidelines have been prepared to help SGU event organisers host environmentally responsible golfing events in the future. These simple steps towards sustainability can equally assist venue managers and event organisers for other sporting events.

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Why don’t we consider hosting Winter Olympics in warmer climes

As Linda Coady, Vice President of sustainability for VANOC said "If we used helicopters every day from this point until the end of February for eight hours a day, it would increase our carbon footprint by less than one per cent……". Coady further commented "Similarly, with the trucking [of] snow, if we trucked in 100 tonnes, it would only increase our carbon footprint by about three or 4,000 tonnes.". If this is the case why don’t we consider hosting Winter Olympics in warmer climes if trucking/airlifting in snow really does have such a ‘minimal’ impact? If we use this calculus, surely Organising Committees and Delivery Authorities of hot countries could build this into their overall carbon budget and still beat the likes of Turin’s carbon impact!