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© Paleo Festival

Vernier, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Major sports and cultural events draw 9 million people each year in Switzerland and can have an important negative impact on the environment, says the Swiss section of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in a report released 24 June. Events such as Nyon’s Paleo Festival and the ski marathon in Engadin, canton Grisons, make a concerted effort to reduce that impact, the report says. They encourage public transport to the venue, use power from renewable sources, provide bio-degradable containers for food, and bio foods among other things. Other events that come at the top of the list of the ecologically-minded are the St. Gallen Openair, the Lucerne marathon, and the OrangeCinema in Bern, Basel, and Zurich. The Orange openair cinema in Geneva’s Genève-Plage area was not evaluated because they did not reply to the questionaire sent out to the event organizers, Walter Vetterli, spokesperson of WWF, Switzerland told GenevaLunch.

Sports events in Switzerland come at the bottom of the list, according to the study. Football and hockey games generally do not  include an ecological concept in their planning. They get points for including public transportation in the entry price to the venue, but make little additional efforts. Other events that did not make the grade were the Locarno International Film Festival and the Crans-Montana European golf championship.

WWF Switzerland sent questionaires to all the major events organizers in Switzerland and 38 replied. The answers were checked for consistency and plausibility, WWF’s Vetterli said.

Full WWF report (in Ger), (Fre resumé)