Measuring the Environmental and Economic Impacts of a Six Nations Rugby International

Information taken from BRASS

The Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University has conducted a study to measure the environmental and economic impacts of a Six Nations Rugby International.

The academics hope that the research will be applied to future events to maximise economic impacts, whilst minimizing environmental impacts.

Environmental Input Output Analysis (ENVIO) was used to measure the ecological footprint of the event.  This converts the environmental impact of different types of resource use into a single measure: land area.

The study measured the environmental and economic impacts of the Scotland v Wales match in the 2006 Six Nations Championship. There were approximately 85,499 visitors who generated a total of £16.4 million for the Cardiff economy, and 1,700 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
 
The researchers calculated the event's ecological footprint by measuring supporter travel to the event, supporter food and drink consumption, energy use in visitor accommodation, the infrastructure of the event venue and event related waste.

The total visitor ecological footprint was 3,578 global hectares (gha) or 0.042 gha per visitor.
Visitor food and drink totalled 61% of the event footprint and visitor travel was 31% of the total event footprint.  The waste footprint was just 1.6% of the total event footprint.

The study found that replacing 50% of car travel with rail and coach could reduce the travel footprint of the event by 15%. Recycling 100% paper, glass and card could reduce the waste footprint by 22%.

For more information about the study, download the presentation here. For more information about BRASS see the website

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