Brazil wants to score green goals. That’s the message sent by Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira during an announcement of Brazil’s continuing efforts to make this year’s World Cup as environmentally friendly as possible.
In early 2014, Brazil embarked on a plan to offset all of the carbon emissions resulting from World Cup construction programs, travel, and other related activities. Brazil reached out to owners of carbon credits in an effort to convince them to exchange their credits for publicity. Carbon credits are backed by the United Nations and are an internationally tradable permit to emit a specific amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Having already spent billions in preparation for the event, Brazil decided not to spend more money purchasing carbon offsets on the world market, even though the credits are trading at historical lows.
FIFA has also committed to operating an environmentally friendly World Cup. However, FIFA plans to buy credits to cover its projected 2.7 million metric ton carbon dioxide equivalent footprint. FIFA’s carbon footprint is based on its estimation of the impact caused by its staff traveling before, during, and after the event.
Brazil projects that the combined carbon footprint of building the stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup, airline travel for teams and fans, hosting the games, and indirect emissions will total 1.4 million metric tons. That’s about half of the carbon footprint of the 2012 Olympics in London.
According to Teixeira, Brazil is on track to offset 100% of its direct emissions and to accomplish the “greatest possible mitigation of tournament related carbon.” As of late May, Brazil had already received donations of carbon credits amounting to 115,000 metric tons of emission.
Brazil has also teamed up with the United Nations Environment Program to create the Green Passport initiative. The initiative encourages soccer fans to practice environmentally sustainable tourism while in Brazil. With the help of a mobile phone app and official spokesperson, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, Green Passport is offering environmentally friendly travel itineraries in each host city. Other related initiatives include training garbage collectors on recycling and erecting kiosks to sell local organically produced food.
