Sustainable Events Management:

Carbon Neutrality Best Practice Guidance & Examples

This page includes:

Best practice examples from events
Best practice guidance for organisers from the World Athletics Sustainable Events Management System, and
additional resources

Attention event organisers:

- Did you know that our Sustainable Events Resource Centre has 13 templates available to help with your sustainability planning and reporting?

- What are some ways that you've incorporated carbon neutrality goals and objective's into your event's delivery? Let us know so we can help promote them. Let us know at sustainability@worldathletics.org.

Last updated: 23 March 2025

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Carbon Neutrality Planning - Best Practice Examples and Resources

04 February 2025

Recycling aluminum at the Bangsaen21 in Thailand

At the 2024 Bangsaen21 Half Marathon in Thailand, Aluminium Loop, a leading company in recycled aluminum production, provided mineral water for runners in recycled aluminum cans. After the race, a ‘Can Return’ campaign encouraged participants to drop off used cans to be recycled.

3,667 cans (weighing 55kg) were collected, reducing carbon emissions by 502.15 KgCO2e. This is equivalent to planting 50 trees and conserving 2,462.39 kWh of energy.

Proceeds from selling the recycled cans were donated to the Prostheses Foundation of Her Royal Highness the Princess Mother as part of the ‘TBC Recycle for Life’ campaign, with the goal of donating 100 prosthetic legs by 2025.

24 January 2025

Raising funds for carbon offsetting at the New York City Marathon

In 2024, New York Road Runners’ NYRR Team for Climate made history by partnering with Anew Climate to make the TCS New York City Marathon the first major marathon to introduce a guaranteed race entry method supporting sustainability initiatives. Runners were offered the opportunity to join NYRR’s Team for Climate and fundraise to offset or reduce carbon emissions with verified carbon credits for forest management projects.

Nearly 250 runners participated in the inaugural NYRR Team for Climate fundraising event during the 2024 New York City Marathon, raising almost $800,000 which was enough to offset the entire carbon footprint of the event.

New York Road Runners now implements NYRR Team for Climate across its three marquee races: the TCS New York City Marathon, United Airlines NYC Half and RBC Brooklyn Half.

12 January 2025

Empowering runners at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon to reduce their carbon footprint

The 2024 TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon approached carbon neutrality by implementing a ‘Sustainability Scorecard’ into the event app, taking the guesswork out of sustainability by offering tips to runners. This enabled them to make training and race day decisions with the planet in mind.

Organisers also partnered with various green charity organisations, such as Soles4Souls to donate or recycle old running shoes and athletic gear and Green Event Ninjas to manage waste.

26 November 2024

Circular economy at the Kuala Lumpur Marathon

Pressio, official apparel partner of the 2024 Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon, used innovative printing methods to eliminate toxic batch drying, incorporating 100% recycled fabrics into run-specific race apparel.

Organisers also absorbed the extra costs of sustainable production and upcycled plastics to divert waste from landfill and showcase circular economy. This was complemented by including sustainability guidance in the runners guide such as how to segregate waste.

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Carbon Neutrality - Best Practice Guidance

Climate change driven by accelerated global carbon emissions is a global issue affecting every person on the planet with impacts including ocean acidification, disruption of the food chain, ‘extreme’ weather events, home and habitat destruction and sea level rise.

World Athletics has recognised the importance of climate action and the impact this has on athletics, human health and wellbeing. Athletics, in particular its events, produce a significant carbon footprint. However, they also have the opportunity to embrace, utilise and showcase innovative technology to change energy sources to renewables. Significant carbon emissions and, therefore, carbon mitigation steps, should focus on:

1. Travel

2. Energy Consumption

3. Humand and Financial Resources

4. Food and Beverage

5. Waste

This best practice is implemented across the event planning cycle as follows:

1. During event planning

- Identify top line carbon emissions to help prioritise actions to reduce emissions

- Build a carbon reduction plan that details your specific objectives, targets (driven by baseline data where data exists), KPI’s and actions, also listing monitoring and reporting requirements

- Identify and commit to a relevant carbon offset programme to achieve net zero carbon emissions for specified scope

- Ticketing programme incorporates link to chosen offset programme, encouraging visitors to offset the carbon impact of their travel to the event

- Brief/ educate LOC on carbon reduction plan and best practices, ensuring that everyone is clear of the targets and their roles and responsibilities

- Ensure that carbon monitoring requirements are detailed in all bid, tender and contractual documentation

- Travel and transport policy (including monitoring and reporting requirements and processes) is finalised before bookings are made

- Engage with host city/ venues to leverage partnerships and existing initiatives that can help achieve targets and provide a communication platform for host cities/ venues

- Showcase innovative carbon reduction/ zero carbon technology through collaborative partnerships

- Engage all suppliers and contractors with carbon reduction goals and get their buy in to minimise their impact

- Healthy and public transport options are communicated to all stakeholders

- Develop communication and engagement plan to campaign around carbon neutrality, raise awareness of your event’s commitments and share best practice to drive actions across stakeholders

2. During event delivery

- All staff are educated on specific actions and initiatives, regular checks to be completed to reduce energy consumption and their responsibilities

- Ensure signage (BOH and FOH) encourages all stakeholders to demonstrate best practices to reduce energy consumption (e.g. turning off lights, unplugging devices, turning off equipment overnight.)

- Event director, or designated staff member, ensures that all lighting/ equipment/ generators etc are, where possible, turned off before leaving event site each evening

3. During event wash up and review

- Post event ‘wash up’ meetings with all partners, contractors, suppliers to ensure all data has been submitted to event organisers and share achievements and lessons to drive continual improvements

- Any areas for improvement are fed into and documented (along with actions) during the internal post event review meeting and incorporated into end of event report

NOTE: For more specific information and examples, you should also consult the best practice pages for Energy Management, Food Management, Travel Planning, Waste Management and Water Management.

Additional Resources

Articles

June 2025

This New Tool Will Help Sports Teams Cut Their Carbon Footprint

World Athletics was featured in a TIME article about The Carbon Methodology and Calculator for Sport, an increasingly adopted tool across the sport industry for teams and organisations to measure their carbon footprint.