By Kevin Muniz and Yaofeng Zhao
@redlineproject
AI disclosure: The summary, FAQ and multimedia for this project were created using a Notebook LM analysis of the story text.
Summary: Sports significantly contribute to climate change through travel emissions, energy use and waste. Events like the FIFA World Cup and Winter Olympics face increasing environmental scrutiny. Climate change also endangers athletes with extreme heat and flooding. Sport organizations, venues, athletes and brands pursue sustainability efforts, though greenwashing concerns remain.
Sports are an integral part of culture worldwide, becoming a major part of people’s daily lives as entertainment. However, sports events are not immune to impacting climate change. They leave a carbon footprint from the gas emissions associated with traveling and waste disposal at stadiums, data from various sources show.
Moreover, certain sports and events, including the Winter Olympics, are threatened by climate change, which remains a major concern. Due to this, sustainability in sports has become a new top priority to ensure a greener future, involving multifaceted efforts from both organizations and athletes.
Sports leave a large carbon footprint in many ways, according to studies. Team travel involves flying between cities — often on private jets — for their matches and then riding on coach buses from airports and hotels to stadiums for the games. Global sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, are notorious for producing large amounts of carbon dioxide.
According to FIFA, the 2022 Qatar World Cup generated 3.8 tons of carbon emissions, with 2.2 million of these coming from transportation. FIFA’s carbon emissions are expected to increase in its upcoming editions, including the 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted in the US, Canada and Mexico.
Environmental researchers believe that the event may generate up to 9 million tons of carbon emissions when it is held in 2026.
UIC Civil, Materials and Environmental Engineering Professor Aslihan Karatas agreed that the 2026 World Cup could emit millions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“It’s going to create a lot of carbon emissions, just maybe because of the travel,” she said.
Karatas added that North America has a different transportation system compared to previous hosts.
“Public transportation is not well developed, so people cannot utilize it for going from one place to another by train,” she said when explaining why FIFA World Cup travel tends to generate high emissions. “It’s not feasible at all.
“The whole culture, whole country is relying on the cars and the planes,” Karatas said, noting North America’s reliance on private transportation. “That’s how it’s been established.”
Likewise, Formula 1 racing is also a global sport known for carbon emissions. In 2022, the organization emitted 223k tons into the atmosphere. Logistics made up most of F1’s emissions, accounting for more than 100k tons, according to Ecollective.
Being a global sport, this involves transporting not only drivers and staff, but also cars from one race to another held anywhere in the world.
Not only is travel a significant contributor to carbon emissions, but energy consumption from sports venues is also a substantial contributor to this issue. For example, AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, uses approximately 51 megawatts of electricity per day, primarily generated from lighting, equipment, machinery, and environmental control systems.
However, according to Scout Cities, this is still less than the amount of electricity generated by Intel’s Fab 42 manufacturing facility, located in Chandler, Arizona, which uses up to 2,400 megawatts a day. The Wall Street Journal claimed that on a typical game day, the stadium generates 10 megawatts, which is more than Liberia’s entire national power grid.
This example demonstrates that a single stadium generates a substantial amount of electricity; however, other locations can still produce more than a sports venue does. Stadiums also generate significant amounts of waste from sporting events.
NFL stadiums produce between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds of waste volume, depending on seat capacity. This is in stark contrast to high school stadiums, which typically have fewer seats and fewer fans in attendance, thus generating less waste than professional sports venues.
Much of the waste originates from consumables such as food, drinks, packaging, containers, cups, promotional materials and other items. On average, a fan disposes of 1.5 lbs of waste at a sporting event, according to Prime Dumpster, Inc. This demonstrates that capacity and attendance can significantly impact the amount of garbage generated by a sporting event.
In addition to the carbon footprint sports produce, climate change has become a major threat to sports. The Winter Olympics have been particularly vulnerable to this problem, and among the measures taken to address it is the use of artificial snow. Several Winter Olympics editions have used it, beginning with the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.
Since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, its use has increased. Approximately 80% of the snow used during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics was artificial, and similarly, the 2018 edition in PyeongChang, South Korea, featured 98% synthetic snow.
For the 2022 games in Beijing, 100% of the snow was artificial. The IOC claimed that the artificial snow was created using renewable energy. The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, Italy, are expected to use artificial snow just like the previous editions, requiring 2.4 million cubic meters of it for the events.
Additionally, the use of artificial snow has been questioned by environmentalists. They warn that the process of manufacturing it involves heavy use of water, which they say can damage local ecosystems, and the use of fossil fuel energy to power the snow machines. The Winter Olympics isn’t the only winter sporting event using snow machines; many ski resorts worldwide also use them.
This issue highlights that, despite the use of snow machines being an effort employed by winter sports to address climate change, it still presents its own environmental challenges. Like winter and summer sports are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Many summer sports, including soccer, football, baseball, and tennis are primarily played outdoors. This puts athletes at risk of heat exhaustion if they play in scorching heat. Due to these conditions, many sports events have been postponed or delayed.
For example, in 2024, a KBO League baseball game in South Korea was postponed due to extreme heat. The 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo had its events delayed due to extremely hot temperatures, with the organizers citing this as a measure to ensure the health and safety of the participants.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup took place in Qatar, which is known for its desert hot climate. Because of its climate, FIFA held it in November and December of that year instead of the traditional June and July, a move that UIC Earth and Environmental Sciences professor Andrew Malone said is a smart one.
“I think adaptive strategies, such as changing the season, changing what month seasons are played in, could be one strategy,” he said. “If you’re having more dangerously hot summers, then starting your seasons later in the year might be one way to do that.”
Although moving outdoor sporting events to cooler weather days has been an effective measure to address the heat, athletes have still suffered from heat exhaustion, with some cases being even fatal.
According to the Korey Stringer Institute, 58 high school football players have died from heat stroke between 1992 and 2024, and thousands have been hospitalized for non-fatal heat exhaustion each year.
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Natalie Kozlowski, the assistant athletic director at Morton High School District 201, said that Illinois high schools follow IHSA protocol for extreme heat.
“There is an IHSA protocol for sports in extreme heat, and whether breaks need to be given,” she said. “Athletic trainers are the ones who check that and reach out to coaches. This happened last year and some coaches, like cross country, decided to do practice in [the morning] to avoid extreme heat.”
Besides amateur and interscholastic athletes, the risk of heat exhaustion extends even to professional athletes. In 2001, Minnesota Vikings player Korey Stringer died from heat stroke he suffered during training camp practice that took place in extremely hot weather.
In the aftermath of his death, the NFL implemented many changes to prevent heat stroke deaths by making outdoor practices safer and creating protocols to be activated in the event of heat exhaustion. Years later, the Korey Stringer Institute was founded in partnership between his family, the NFL, Gatorade, and the University of Connecticut, which aims to address heat exhaustion in sports.
The player hospitalizations and deaths from heat exhaustion suffered during sporting practices and events prove that extreme heat has become a major threat to sports and athletes’ health and safety. Extreme heat isn’t the only climate change effect that is affecting sports
During the spring and summer, thunderstorms are common. With the rise of climate change, thunderstorms have become more torrential. Flooding is one of the storm’s major threats, and it has increased due to climate change as well.
This has also posed a significant threat to outdoor sports, leading to the postponement of some events as a result. In August 2025, multiple high school football games in Charleston County, South Carolina, were canceled due to flash floods caused by severe thunderstorms occurring in the county.
In November 2025, five Copa del Rey games were postponed due to deadly floods in the Spanish region of Valencia and were rescheduled for later dates. The same floods also caused Real Madrid vs. Valencia, scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 1, to be postponed.
Hurricanes, which often produce flooding, can also affect sports. The New Orleans Saints played their 2005 season in temporary venues due to Hurricane Katrina, which damaged their home venue, the Superdome, requiring a year of repairs.
Likewise, the New Orleans Hornets temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City for their 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons, as their arena underwent repairs from hurricane damage.
Malone noted that New Orleans’ vulnerability to hurricanes and rising ocean levels has prompted measures to prevent a devastating flood from occurring in the future.
“Much of the city today is below the current water levels of the Mississippi River,” he said. “In the short term, we can build levees and retaining walls to keep the water back.”
He said he also believes that the rising sea levels threatening New Orleans could cause its sports teams to consider relocation in the future.
“There may need to be relocations of the cities that are deemed too risky to live in,” Malone said. “If that happens to be where a sports stadium is or a practice field is, that would then require the city and/or those teams to invest the money to relocate.”
The effects of climate change, such as extreme heat and severe floods, have proven to be major threats to sports, as exemplified by the examples explained earlier.
In the face of climate change, some professional sports teams have addressed the issue by building greener venues. Several NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL stadiums have been LEED-certified, a rating system created by the U.S. Green Building Council, an organization dedicated to building environmentally friendly structures.
One example is Soldier Field, home to the NFL’s Chicago Bears. Following its 2002–03 reconstruction, it was transformed into a LEED-certified venue, making it the first NFL venue to achieve that certification. The stadium’s rating has since been upgraded to Gold, one of the system’s highest ratings. Its greener practices include recycling programs, a free EV parking lot, and LED lighting.
Several other NFL venues have followed suit since then. Several college sports venues have also been constructed with environmental sustainability in mind. University of North Texas’ football stadium, DATCU Stadium, became the first newly built NCAA football stadium to achieve the LEED Platinum rating, the highest LEED certification a building can achieve.
Among the venue’s greener features is its wind turbines that generate electricity for the stadium. It was also built partially using recyclable materials, according to North Texas. These examples demonstrate that a greener venue is possible, and a LEED rating can verify its green status.
Green spectatorship is a concept that aims to make the experience of attending a sporting event more environmentally friendly, including the use of public transportation, as well as reusable and recyclable materials. Climate Pledge Arena, home of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, underwent renovations in 2021 to transform the six-decade-old arena into a green venue.
In addition to its environmentally friendly features, the company also aims to achieve zero waste and provide a greener fan experience. To provide such an experience, the arena utilizes solar panels to power itself, offers recycling programs, provides free public transit, features a cistern that collects all rainwater to create the NHL ice, and boasts energy-efficient bathrooms and showers. This shows that it is possible for a fan to be a green spectator, and the Climate Pledge Arena has set a model that other stadiums could follow.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FIFA have responded to the need for sustainability by demonstrating how they could make their games greener for the future. The IOC has outlined its plan to make environmental protection a priority, with its webpage detailing its courses of action to make its events greener.
FIFA has also attempted to address sustainability by creating a document detailing its plan to make its games sustainable for the future. Despite its sustainability plans, the federation continues to be criticized for greenwashing, a practice in which an organization uses deceptive public relations and marketing tactics to make its policies appear to be eco-friendly. This criticism was reinforced when environmental observers found that FIFA had falsified their carbon neutrality claims for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
Like FIFA, the IOC has also faced criticism for greenwashing. An article by the Scientific American listed its practices in the 2024 Paris Olympics that contradicted its sustainability plan by mentioning, but not limited to, travel emissions and the use of concrete for venue construction.
The sustainability initiatives by the IOC and FIFA have attempted to address their environmental plans, but criticism from environmentalists, along with their evidence to support it, has raised concerns and questions regarding the validity of their visions.
While sports organizations have addressed environmental concerns, athletes have stepped up to participate in the green movement as well. Tennis great Serena Williams, surfing champion Kelly Slater, and soccer great Megan Rapinoe are among the athletes voicing their commitment to a greener future.
Williams has committed to an eco-friendly future by launching a clothing brand using greener materials and promoting a plant-based diet she has adopted. Slater also founded his clothing line Outerknown, selling apparel made with sustainable materials, and he has advocated for ocean protection efforts. Rapinoe has used her platform to advocate for climate justice, and she also supports various environmental programs and campaigns.
These athletes have shown to be voices leading the movement for greener solutions through business ventures and advocacy, bringing sports and environmentalism together.
Additionally, sports clubs have supported greener causes. Apart from building eco-friendly venues, clubs have also supported conservation efforts and organized environmental activities.
An Italian soccer club, Juventus, has partnered with One Tree Planted to plant trees for each goal scored. The Philadelphia Eagles, an NFL team, recently formed a partnership with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation with the purpose of seabird and ocean protection efforts.
There have also been league efforts to promote environmental efforts. The MLB, for instance, has a list of club initiatives detailing how teams have committed to creating a sustainable environment.
An English soccer club, the Forest Green Rovers, has made it its mission to make its games and fan experiences greener. Among its efforts have been selling vegan concessions exclusively, using reusable bottles and encouraging carbon-free travel, such as biking and driving electric vehicles. Additionally, its stadium uses LED lighting, battery-powered pitch displays and scoreboards, and other renewable sources to power it.
Wearing uniforms manufactured from recycled materials has also become a new way for teams to become sustainable. In 2018, the Miami Hurricanes began wearing uniforms and cleats made with waste recovered from the ocean. In 2021, NHL teams also started adopting uniforms produced from recycled content.
These various efforts, ranging from switching to uniforms made of eco-friendly materials to partnering with wildlife and climate organizations, have shown that sports clubs are participating in an endeavor to promote a greener environment.
Sports apparel companies have also stepped up to confronting climate change by manufacturing their products from recycled materials.
The fashion industry has contributed to 8–10% of global carbon emissions, mainly from production. Many sports apparel items are made from polyester, which is generally manufactured from fossil fuels, therefore making it unsustainable and non-recyclable.
In response to that issue, Adidas has partnered with Parley to produce items made from recovered ocean plastics. Some sports teams and leagues, including several MLS clubs and the New Zealand national rugby team, have even utilized those items.
Patagonia, an outdoor sports apparel brand, produces its items primarily from eco-friendly materials. On the company’s environmental responsibility page, it lists the recycled materials used in production. In addition, it has expanded its sustainability by participating in various environmental justice programs.
Adidas and Patagonia have demonstrated that they are tackling climate change by producing greener products, though the sports apparel industry still has a long way to go to address its environmental impact.
Overall, the relationship between sports and the environment is at a turning point. Sports can be a contributor and also can be a vulnerable victim of climate change.
The immense carbon footprint generated by events such as the FIFA World Cup and Formula 1, the waste production, and energy consumption at stadiums, all of these reflect the impact on the environment.
Additionally, weather events such as extreme heat and flooding, which are both linked to climate change, have also jeopardized sporting events and player health and safety.
In the face of climate change, sports organizations, leagues, clubs, athletes, and apparel brands have all played various roles in addressing the issue and attempting to provide solutions to ensure a greener future.
Only time will tell if their efforts will pay off and effectively help the environment. It is still up to them to continue to find other solutions, as the complex relationship between sports and the environment deepens.
“So potentially, partnerships with sport leagues and companies can be a cool opportunity for sports teams to contribute to a greener electricity future,” Malone said.
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FAQ: Sports and the Environment
Q: How significant is the carbon footprint left by the sports industry?
A: Sports leave a large carbon footprint primarily through gas emissions associated with traveling and waste disposal. Team travel often involves flying on private jets and riding coach buses. Global events are notorious emitters; the 2022 Qatar World Cup generated 3.8 tons of carbon emissions, with 2.2 million tons coming solely from transportation. Environmental researchers believe the 2026 World Cup could generate up to 9 million tons of carbon emissions. Energy consumption from sports venues is also substantial; for instance, AT&T Stadium uses approximately 51 megawatts of electricity per day. Additionally, NFL stadiums can produce between 30,000 to 50,000 pounds of waste during an event
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Q: How does climate change threaten sporting events and athlete safety?
A: Climate change threatens sports in several ways. Winter sports, like the Winter Olympics, are vulnerable, often relying on artificial snow (e.g., 100% artificial snow was used in the 2022 Beijing Games). The process of manufacturing artificial snow has been questioned by environmentalists due to heavy water use and the need for fossil fuel energy to power the machines. For summer sports, extreme heat puts athletes at risk of heat exhaustion, leading to event postponements or delays. Between 1992 and 2024, 58 high school football players died from heat stroke. Furthermore, increasing flooding and hurricanes have caused the cancellation or postponement of games and can damage venues, sometimes prompting consideration for team relocation
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Q: What sustainability efforts are being implemented in the sports world?
A: Sustainability has become a top priority, involving multifaceted efforts from organizations and athletes. Teams are building greener venues that are LEED-certified, such as Soldier Field (Gold rating) and DATCU Stadium (Platinum rating). These initiatives include recycling programs, the use of renewable energy (like wind turbines or solar panels), and promoting green spectatorship by offering free public transit. Athletes like Serena Williams and soccer great Megan Rapinoe are advocating for environmental causes through business ventures and platforms. Apparel companies are also addressing the issue by manufacturing products from recycled materials, sometimes using waste recovered from the ocean.