SUSTAINABLE SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT IN SPORT GAMES: A CASE STUDY OF FOOTBALL MATCHES IN THAILAND

Abstract

Sports are essential to humankind. They are undeniably the key to better living in most cultures. The benefits of sports extend beyond one’s physical health to the whole society as a cost-effective tool to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals according to the United Nations Environmental Programme. Similar to other intensifying human activities, sports would be considered as a cause of adverse impacts on nature and environment including noise, water, air pollution, and impact from solid waste. As a countermeasure to the unsustainability of sport events, the International Olympic Committee has adopted The Agenda 21 as an action plan to lessen human impacts on environment. The conclusive plan of The Olympic Movement’s Agenda 21 still nevertheless lacks a concrete solid waste management model. This research was conducted with a goal to obtain a sustainable solid waste management model for sport games. In this research, field observations were utilized at 3 football clubs in Thai Premiere League to obtain information about their environmental impacts regarding solid waste. The solid waste generated at the study stadiums was collected and sorted. The structured questionnaires were applied to the spectators at the study stadiums to obtain information about solid waste generating, disposing and sorting behaviors. The semi-structured questionnaires were used to in-depth interview with the key stakeholders of solid waste management of each study clubs. In addition, the policy relevant was reviewed. The research revealed that only less than 15% of the recyclable wastes proceed to the recycling process. The rest went to inappropriate treatment and generating unnecessary greenhouse gas emission. Questionnaires for the football spectators have shown that despite a strong sign of awareness regarding environmental impacts caused by disposing waste, the spectators in the sport events paid very little attention to waste sorting. The lack of sorting behavior at every study stadium correlates to the very low recycling ratio found in the solid waste collection study. The in-depth interviews with the key stakeholders underlined that it was lack of prior sorting at the study clubs. Despite Thailand’s legal frameworks and policies related to solid waste management, in the field of sports, the current policies are still very lacking in terms of proper incentives, rules, regulations and environmental awareness of solid waste management among the related institutions especially in the Football Association of Thailand. The current solid waste management by the football clubs in the Thai Premier League is still lacks proper management that can be developed by means of a modeling instrument. To achieve proper management, the proposed sustainable solid waste management model comprises of responsive policy, laws and acts formulated, techniques, knowledge, forceful incentives provided and public participation. The model would improve the deficiencies of the current solid waste management and increases the opportunity of resource recovery and recycling at the sport game. Besides, the model could be applied to any sport games in Thailand and other countries.