To deny its little ecological sport image, professional football is deploying real efforts in France, but still limited. Ultimately, it is the economic model that should be revised.
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During record drought, an impeccable green lawn is necessarily suspect. The greens of golf courses have paid the price for a controversy in recent weeks, and the Stade Rennais has been caught in the act of illicit watering of its training grounds on July 19 in broad daylight, by the association Water and rivers from Brittany. The club has recognized “an error” and promised to be amazed.
In full #Canicule and while #illeetvilaine is on drought alert @staderennais sprinkles at 3:30 p.m. its terra… https://t.co/zqx0v65r8j
– Eauetrivieres (@eau and rivers from Brittany)
Difficult, today, to escape the effort of national sobriety. The Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, envisaged, on July 26 on Franceinfo, the prohibition of competitions at night, at the end of the energy and exemplarity savings. What make professional football and rugby shudder: without matches in the evening, television rights would lose a lot of their value.
If the football field serves as a unit of measurement for deforestation or fires, football itself is not ready to serve as a stallion for the ecological transition. And he does not escape a critical examination of his imprint, especially when approaching a World Cup in Qatar (November 20 – December 18) very criticized on this plane. Air transport 2>
In the midst of energy and water crisis, the resources consumed for the lighting and maintenance of lawns withdraw attention. But the construction of stadiums and the transport of spectators constitute the first two posts of emission of co 2 of football. Public routing represents 80 % of those linked to the organization of a match, according to the Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) – To which is added catering and waste Products during these mass events.
On the symbols side, discipline hands the ball to be beaten. Footballers willingly exhibit their very carbonated lives, Tel Karim Benzema who wiped critics by publishing, July 2, A video of its trips in Ferrari, 4 × 4, in private jet and jet ski in Miami. or Kylian Mbappé, in September 2021, who published a “story” showing him on an airplane to perform a Strasbourg-Paris.
The immoderate appeal of air transport teams is also a little too visible. “Paris-Lens by plane, PSG puts a shot in the climate”, had deplored Greenpeace France in January 2021. Not to mention the official car which often makes the round trip to the small trips on site … Those who prefer the train are so rare (4 % of journeys in 2019-2020 in Ligue 1 and League 2, according to the Professional Football League) that these trips make the event, like that of the Stade Rennais in Paris in February. The SNCF nevertheless proposes to privatize and arrange TGVs, at competitive prices.
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