Featured image credit: Johan Cruijff ArenA
Johan Cruijff ArenA, the home of Dutch Eredivisie football club AFC Ajax, has announced the launch of a new international sustainability standard for events and event locations.
The Amsterdam stadium is teaming up with Rotterdam-based GSES (Global Sustainable Enterprise System), which offers a software as a service (SaaS) platform, in the venture. The Global Sustainable Venue Benchmark (GSVB) intends to be a measurement and verification process that tracks the sustainability of organisations, events and suppliers.
Johan Cruijff ArenA said the “groundbreaking and transparent” system “guarantees honesty and integrity”, so that every participating organisation can back up its sustainability promises. For the stadium, officials intend to use the GSVB system to realise last month’s stated pledge to achieve net positive operations in 2030.
Johan Cruijff ArenA stated: “Since our foundation, we have proven ourselves as a socially involved and sustainable stadium, driven by innovation, thanks to good cooperation with our partners. For example, together with various partners we developed the largest European energy storage system in a commercial building for the storage of sustainably generated electricity.
“More than 4,200 solar panels on the roof of the stadium and the purchase of wind energy also provide green energy, and the ArenA is also a member of the ‘1.000 banen voor Zuidoost’ initiative, to help people find work. This gives us a strong starting position for the next step towards net positive.
“With the realisation of this sustainability standard, which offers a guideline for promoting sustainability, we also want to help other organisations become more sustainable, together with GSES. The ArenA can only become net positive if the entire chain contributes to this.
“That is why we ask our partners and suppliers to register on the GSES platform. We will communicate openly and transparently about progress and any challenges, so that other organisations can learn from this.”
The GSES SaaS platform uses the GSES Metastandard as a universal language to measure sustainability. This umbrella standard recognises more than 500 national and international sustainability standards and certificates, making sustainable performance measurable and comparable. All data on the dashboard has been independently verified by a certifying body via Audit Independer.
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