Bundesliga: Football with side effects for the climate

The new season in the Bundesliga kicks off this Friday. For the opening game, champions Bayer Leverkusen travel to Mönchengladbach for the Rhine derby – by bus, after all, the distance between BayArena and Borussia-Park is just 50 kilometers.

In principle, most professional clubs do not have an environmentally friendly approach to away games, as research published on Wednesday by German Environmental Aid (DUH) shows. After that, in the 2022/23 season, no club completely avoided ecologically harmful flying for away games. The players, coaches and support staff from VFL Bochum only got on the plane three times. The then second division club FC St. Pauli flew six times and Werder Bremen seven times. At the dirty end of this table are Borussia Mönchengladbach and TSG Hoffenheim, each with twelve flights. However, a slight majority of the Bundesliga clubs did not consider it necessary to even answer the DHU’s corresponding request.

The number of flights only represents one aspect. Overall, according to the nature and consumer protection organization, many Bundesliga clubs do far too little for the environment and climate. In addition to arrival and departure, the DUH sees a particularly great need for action when offering food in reusable packaging, avoiding motorized individual transport or generating your own electricity from renewable sources. There are also big differences between the clubs in these areas.

For example, the DUH asked about the mobility concepts around the stadiums. Four clubs are setting a good example here. At VFL Bochum’s Ruhr Stadium there are only three car parking spaces available per 100 spectators. There are six car parking spaces each in Freiburg, Bremen and at the arena in Sinsheim, where TSG Hoffenheim plays its home games. With 20, 21 and 23 parking spaces, the stadiums in Mönchengladbach, Wolfsburg and Stuttgart rank at the bottom. When it comes to the number of bicycle parking spaces per 100 car parking spaces, which was also surveyed, the Europa Park stadium in Freiburg is at the top with 176 units. For comparison: in Stuttgart there are just three!

SC Freiburg also fares best by far when it comes to generating its own electricity through photovoltaics; The Baden Bundesliga team has a share of 79.31 percent. Werder Bremen follows in second place with 32.52 percent, third is TSG Hoffenheim with 23.61 percent. For all of the other seven clubs that responded here, the proportion of their own electricity generated from renewable sources is less than 2 percent. In addition, not all Bundesliga clubs rely on 100 percent certified green electricity. At runner-up VfB Stuttgart, around 40 percent of the energy purchased came from nuclear power, coal and natural gas. For those associations that rely on green electricity, the DUH often does not have sufficient proof of origin – “green electricity” or “green electricity” are not protected terms.

Deutsche Umwelthilfe is pleased that the tickets for 16 out of 18 clubs are also valid for arrival and departure using local public transport. Only at 1. FC Union Berlin and FC Bayern Munich are there no combination tickets.

When serving drinks, almost all clubs now rely on reusable cups, which prevents a mountain of waste of several million disposable or plastic cups each season. In Heidenheim, however, 20 percent of drinks are still served in disposable containers. When it comes to food on offer in the Bundesliga stadiums, things are looking “dark,” reports Thomas Fischer. Disposable cardboard is used as standard, criticizes the DHU head of circular economy. There is great potential here to avoid unnecessary waste: “If reusable cups work for the most part, then also for fries & Co. We are therefore demanding 100 percent reusable waste – in and in front of the stadium.”

“Football is the most popular sport in Germany, and the teams are role models for millions of fans,” says DUH managing director Barbara Metz. But when it came to important issues, many clubs did not act in a timely manner. Modern football also includes a contemporary strategy to reduce its own climate and environmental impact.