The European Tour Group’s vision for the Green Drive is to become a showcase for social and environmental responsibility, delivering net positive impacts around the world as part of the wider Golf for Good programme.
What is the European Tour Group’s Green Drive?
Green Drive is a strengthened commitment and approach towards priority issues such as climate change; biodiversity loss; air and ocean pollution; and sustainable and ethical procurement.
The co-ordinated plan was launched on World Environment Day, June 5, 2021 as part of Golf for Good - the European Tour Group's overarching Corporate Social Responsibility programme - and coincides with what the United Nations has called The Decade of Action
The Green Drive will be delivered with support from the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf (GEO) - a non-profit organisation dedicated to inspiring, supporting and recognising sustainability in and through golf around the world.
The European Tour Group’s partnership with GEO - the international specialists in this field - ensures the Green Drive aims are effective, and that results can be tracked closely to allow us to establish baseline figures and to quantify our impacts over the coming years.
The Green Drive approach to climate action is directly aligned to The Paris Agreement and the UN Sport for Climate Framework. All carbon calculations are in line with the UN Greenhouse Gas Protocol; and offsetting will be carried out using GEO’s Sustainable Golf Climate Projects that are in turn fully accredited by The Gold Standard, and which are designed to also ensure additional contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
What are the priority issues?
The European Tour Group will take a holistic and integrated approach to these priority issues, whilst staying practical and focused on the topics that matter most:
Fostering Nature
• Ecosystem enhancement
• Promoting biodiversity
• Avoiding pollution
Conserving Resources
• Energy
• Water
• Materials
Social Responsibility and Value
• Ethical procurement
• Provide health and wellbeing
• Generate multipliers and legacies
Climate Action
• Reduce emissions
• Track emissions
• Credibly offset
The key aims of the European Tour Group’s Green Drive are to: Lead by Example by integrating best practices into core operations, owned events and procurement, establishing Tour wide policies and tools, and activating new partnerships; to Support and Share by providing guidance and examples of best practice, fostering a growing community of collective action and results; and to Promote and Inspire by raising awareness, inspiring others and establishing a credible leadership position for golf in sustainable sport.
We are a global business and we are committed to having a net positive impact wherever we travel, operating in a socially responsible way, and recognising the priority social and environmental issues of our times.
– Keith Pelley, European Tour Group Chief Executive
Implementing the Green Drive
Implementation will encompass all aspects of the business including operations, partnerships, technology, tournaments, TV production and venues across the Tour community, which typically involves staging, promoting and sanctioning over 100 tournaments in over 30 countries each year over the DP World Tour, European Challenge Tour and Legends Tour.
The Green Drive includes commitments to work towards net positive impacts including the following areas:
Operations
Resource efficiency at our offices; responsible travel by our staff; sustainability as part of our charitable giving; consideration of climate neutrality for our core travel and operations.
Technology
Utilising technology and innovations to support sustainable action on venue and throughout our offices including mobile first architecture, contactless environments, cloud-based operations and
Partnerships
Working closely with others in golf, business, government and sustainability to combine knowledge, solutions and innovations for shared goals.
Tournaments
Factoring emissions and impacts of climate into tournament scheduling; leading by example at ET owned, staged and promoted events; encouraging others to participate and extend year on year; consideration of carbon offsetting for certain ’directly associated emissions’ for ET owned and staged tournaments.
Venues
Leading by example with our European Tour Destinations through our partnership with European Golf Design and playing at venues with their own proven track record and evidence of environmental and social responsibility.
TV Production
Leading by example with European Tour Productions supported by Albert, the authority on environmental sustainability for film and TV, along with IMG Studios commitment run broadcast spaces, services and facilities in the most responsible, least impactful way.
