Although Switzerland is a small country with just about 8 million inhabitants in an area that you can travel across in 5 hours, it packs a punch in the sporting world. With top champions in Tennis, Skiing, Snowboarding, Football, Skating, Ice Hockey, Curling, Cycling, Equestrian and Triathlon to name just a few, it fights well above its weight compared to other countries. Switzerland hosts many events and is home to Swiss Top Sport, an association of 16 annual international sporting events. They also host mega-events from time to time including the UEFA EURO 2008, Gymnaestrada 2011 (over 20,000 participants) and regular world championships such as Archery and Ice Hockey in 2009 and both Equestrian and Billiards in 2010. Most telling in its standing as a leader in the sports world, Switzerland is home to approximately 40 international sports organisations including the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, UEFA and the International Cycling Union.

But does Switzerland match its sports excellence with sustainable excellence? WWF Switzerland recently undertook a study with 78 Swiss events looking at their environmental footprint with regards to management of energy, catering, transportation, water, and waste. They cite one example of an 18 hole golf course using as much water as a town of 12,000 inhabitants, showing the need for environmental issues to be considered. Read this recent article in LeTemps to find out more (it’s in French but paste the web address into Google Translate for a quick translation).

Switzerland is starting to take leadership in this area, however. There are currently a number of best practices of Swiss sport event organisers implementing sustainable initiatives. SwissOlympic even has a program called EcoSport.ch that awards an EcoSport prize of a total of 30,000 Swiss Francs every year to events with innovative sustainable projects. Winners of the 2009 Awards were recently announced at the ‘Responsibility.Forum.Schweiz’ and included some cool initiatives like combined train passes with hockey tickets, using solar electricity and selling locally made merchandise out of recyclable materials.