Circularity at the World Cup: how global sport is (slowly) going circular

The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off on 11^th June, bringing 48 teams, 104 matches, and billions of eyes to Canada, Mexico, and America. It is set to be the biggest World Cup to date. It is also, according to analysis from Greenly, set to be the most carbon-intensive, generating an estimated 7.8 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, more than twice the emissions of Qatar 2022.

That figure is uneasy reading for a governing body that has spent years making sustainability commitments. But it also prompts a more practical question for businesses and event organisers watching the tournament unfold: what does circular economy thinking actually look like at the scale of a global mega-event, and how much of it is genuinely happening?

The answer, as this post explores, is: some of it, in some places, is positive. But not nearly enough, and not yet fast enough. For anyone working in sustainability, the World Cup is worth examining, not as a success story, but as a live case study in what happens when the principles of a circular economy meet the commercial and logistical realities of the world’s most-watched sporting event.

First, the scale of the problem

Analysis from carbon accounting firm Greenly puts the tournament’s total footprint at 7,767,543 tonnes of CO₂e. To put that in context, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar generated 3,631,034 tonnes, itself a figure that faced scrutiny. That means we’re scheduled to see the tournament’s footprint double in size this year.

The dominant factor is not stadium energy use, construction, or team travel. It is spectator travel, which accounts for an estimated 87.8% of the total, approximately 6.82 million tonnes. The average overseas visitor is expected to travel around 19,400 kilometres on a return journey, with international fans generating around 5.05 million tonnes of CO2 through air travel alone.

As Greenly noted:

“Meaningful emissions reduction for 2026 and future tournaments will not come primarily from more energy-efficient stadiums or lower-emission team flights. It will come from decisions about where fans travel from, how they get there, and whether the tournament’s format encourages or discourages long-haul travel.”

The tournament’s expansion from 32 to 48 teams and 64 to 104 matches is the structural driver of this increase. Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) put the figure even higher, at over nine million tonnes when sponsor emissions are factored in, calling it the most climate-damaging edition in the tournament’s history. A BBC Sport investigation also discovered that England fans following their team through the group stages could travel more than 1,760 miles between host cities, generating 3.5 tonnes of CO₂ per supporter.

What FIFA’s sustainability strategy actually commits to

FIFA has published a FIFA World Cup 26™ Sustainability and Human Rights Strategy, organised across environmental, social, economic, and governance pillars. On the environmental side, the commitments cover four areas: energy and climate, water and biodiversity, waste and circular economy, and sustainable sourcing.

The waste and circular economy elements include measures to reduce food waste, reuse construction materials and temporary infrastructure, and improve recycling systems during the tournament. Several host cities have made specific operational pledges aligned with this strategy.

In Houston, the 2026 host committee committed to supplying 100% renewable electricity to the tournament’s main official sites.

In Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to one of the tournament’s top venues, runs on renewable energy and has more than 4,000 solar panels.

All 16 stadiums will install hybrid natural grass fields for the tournament, which can isolate carbon, improve biodiversity, and reduce the urban heat island effect compared with the artificial turf they replace.

At Lumen Field in Seattle, the ambition is more precise. The stadium has committed to running a zero-waste event for the World Cup, building on a programme that already diverts 90-95% of waste from landfill through recycling and composting. A purpose-built sorting system has reduced post-match waste sorting from a task requiring 100 staff to one requiring around 20.

In Mexico, FIFA and the country’s Ministry of Environment launched “Gol por el Ambiente” (Goal for the Environment), a voluntary call to action for public, private, and social organisations to implement circular economy projects ahead of the tournament, targeting plastic and textile waste specifically.

The gap between ambition and reality

There is an obvious tension in all of this. FIFA has made genuine commitments on paper. Several host venues are taking operational circularity seriously. And yet the tournament’s headline emissions figure is more than double that of its previous tournaments and continues to rise.

The problem, as multiple researchers and environmental commentators have observed, is that the sustainability measures in place address a small fraction of the actual impact. Stadium operations and renovations account for just 3.1% of projected emissions. The measures receiving the most attention, solar panels, recycling bins, and hybrid grass pitches, are real improvements, but only optimise around the edges of a structure that makes mass long-haul air travel functionally unavoidable.

Then there is the question of reusable bottles. In the days before the tournament kicked off, FIFA confirmed that fans would not be permitted to bring reusable water bottles into stadiums in the US and Canada, citing “safety and security reasons.” Disposable single-use plastic bottles were permitted.

What circular economy principles actually look like at the event scale

Despite the gap between ambition and reality, the World Cup does offer a useful lens through which to examine how circular thinking applies, or fails to apply, to large-scale events. There are four areas worth exploring further.

Infrastructure and materials

The decision not to build new stadiums is the single biggest circular intervention in the 2026 plan, and it is meaningful. All venues were already in use before the tournament and will continue after it. This is circular economy thinking applied to an infrastructure level: designing for longevity and continued use rather than single-purpose construction.

Temporary overlay structures, the fencing, branding, hospitality units, and fan zones that appear around venues for a tournament, are a different matter. The commitment to reuse construction materials and temporary infrastructure is in the strategy, but the details of how this will be measured and demonstrated in practice are limited.

Waste and materials recovery

Waste generated on match days is where the most visible circular activity is happening. Lumen Field’s zero-waste ambition is the standout example. This is a programme built over 20 years that has already achieved 90-95% landfill diversion and is now being scaled for the World Cup. The sorting technology in place there, reducing waste handling from 100 staff to 20, is a practical demonstration of what investment in materials recovery infrastructure delivers.

The “Gol por el Ambiente” initiative in Mexico targets plastic and textile waste at the tournament through circular economy projects. While it is voluntary, its framing around industrial competitiveness and environmental impact is a useful model for businesses to be engaged in circular programmes: not purely on ethical grounds, but on the basis that circular systems reduce input costs and create value from what would otherwise become waste.

Extended producer responsibility and procurement

The bid document’s original commitment to source “environmentally and socially sustainable materials for all operations”, from construction to food and beverages, reflects extended producer responsibility logic applied upstream. If suppliers must meet ISO 20400 sustainable procurement standards to work with the tournament, that requirement creates pressure throughout the supply chain, shifting sustainability from a procurement preference to a market-entry condition.

Whether this has been implemented consistently across all 16 host cities is a different question. The enforcement of supply chain sustainability commitments at mega-event scale has historically been inconsistent, with voluntary standards proving difficult to police.

Legacy and circular system building

The most genuinely circular outcome of a global event is not what happens during the tournament; it is what remains after it.

When the following have been embedded in venue operations, they make a host city more circular long after the cameras have left:

• Upgraded recycling and composting infrastructure
• Improved public transportation networks
• Reusable cup and container systems

Toronto’s commitment to expanding recycling and composting systems at stadiums and fan festivals, and improving active transportation links, is an example of event hosting being used as a catalyst for infrastructure investment. Whether the circular economy improvements installed for the World Cup persist in everyday operations is the measure of genuine legacy.

Sport and the circularity gap

The World Cup’s sustainability tensions are not unique to football. They reflect a wider pattern in how global sport engages with environmental commitments. The circularity gap, the difference between the material resources flowing through the global economy and the proportion that are actually recovered and recirculated, applies to sport as readily as it applies to any other sector.

Global sporting events are, in material terms, temporary focuses of consumption: food, drink, merchandise, transport, energy, and built infrastructure. Very little of this is designed for recovery. Concession packaging is still predominantly single-use. Branded merchandise is rarely designed for durability or end-of-life recovery. Temporary structures are still too often discarded rather than redeployed.

The World Cup is an opportunity to change this, to demonstrate, in front of a global audience, that circular economy principles can operate at scale. So does Earth Overshoot Day, which falls on 30^th July in 2026, right as the World Cup final is played. The timing is not coincidental: the tournament, and events like it, are a material contributor to the resource overshoot the date marks.

The uncomfortable reality for sport’s governing bodies is the same as that facing many large businesses: reducing environmental impact needs structural change, not just operational optimisation. Better recycling bins matter. Zero-carbon stadiums matter. But as long as the format requires millions of people to fly across continents to watch 104 matches, the headline emissions figure will remain very large.

What this means for businesses thinking about circularity

For sustainability leads, watching the World Cup as a case study rather than a spectator event, the lessons are instructive:

• Scope your impact honestly. FIFA’s strategy addresses stadium operations, while spectator travel accounts for 87.8% of emissions. Many businesses similarly focus their sustainability programmes on the elements they directly control while undercounting their wider footprint. Scope 3 emissions, those in the value chain, are where most material impact sits.
• Voluntary commitments are not the same as structural change. The most effective circular intervention at the World Cup, no new stadiums, was a structural design decision, not a voluntary programme. Circular economy progress that depends entirely on voluntary action tends to plateau.
• Supply chain requirements create market leverage. Requiring suppliers to meet sustainability standards to access a contract is more powerful than encouraging them to improve voluntarily. The bid’s ISO 20400 procurement commitment is the right instinct, even if enforcement is imperfect.

Legacy thinking matters more than event thinking. The circular systems that remain in host cities after the tournament, improved waste infrastructure, and reuse programmes embedded in venues, are the lasting measure of whether the World Cup moved the dial on circularity.

How Reconomy can help

Reconomy works with businesses to close the gap between circular ambition and circular reality, from waste data and compliance to operational materials recovery and extended producer responsibility.

Whether you are running a single facility or managing a complex supply chain, our specialist brands can help you understand your material flows, meet your regulatory obligations, and build a programme that goes beyond the incremental.

Find out more about the circular economy and what it means in practice for your business.

Sources and further reading

• Greenly: FIFA World Cup 2026 carbon footprint analysis , Sustainability Online, June 2026
• FIFA World Cup 26™ Sustainability and Human Rights Strategy , FIFA Inside, 2026
• World Cup climate concerns , The Guardian , The Guardian, May 2026
• World Cup sends dangerous message on climate , BBC Sport , BBC Sport, 2025
• Scientists for Global Responsibility: 2026 World Cup most polluting ever
• VoLo Foundation: FIFA’s environmental plan for 2026