Abstract
Introduction: In response to extreme climate, environmental sustainability has become a consensus, Therefore, how to reduce environmental has become a key task in the whole world. Since the operation of sporting event and venue management also cause the environmental impacts, sporting organizations should be responsible for minimizing negative environmental impact (e.g., reduction of carbon emission) though estimating the carbon footprint caused by any product or activity and identify contributions of components that produced the carbon emission associated with sporting events. The purpose of this study was to conduct an inventory of the carbon footprint of road running events through the application of Life Cycle Analysis and Assessment (LCA). Methods: The framework for the carbon footprint analysis was built through the literatures review in while two measuring tools were developed for the event organizer as well as runners. A framework for the carbon footprint inventory of running events was proposed, and an inventory questionnaire was developed and asked the event organizer to fill in. At the same time, a questionnaire was compiled to collect the transportation and accommodation information of the participants. The above two research tools have been repeatedly discussed and pre-tested by the research team and the event organizer to improve their reliability and validity. In addition, Excel package software is used for data calculation. Results: The total carbon footprint was estimated at about 14mt CO2e. The average carbon footprint per runner was approximately 0.028mt kg CO2-e. Three-quarters of carbon emissions were accounted by the event runners. As for the event organizers, two-thirds of the overall emissions, resulted from the pre-event period. In addition, fifty percent of the carbon emissions generated from the components of transportation. Conclusion: The framework from this study definitely can be used for other sporting events while these estimated numbers, including totality, breakdown, per event participants and periods, by this study laid a fundamental reference for further analysis. Transportation accounted for the majority of carbon emission which more environmental practices by the event organizers are required. Furthermore, more systematic efforts are needed to investigates especially the boundaries and protocol of the carbon footprint analysis.