Sports events leave a giant 'ecological footprint'

Andrea Collins of Cardiff University in the UK and her colleagues looked at the 2004 soccer FA Cup final, held at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. They converted the energy and resources used on the day of the match into an ecological footprint - the hypothetical area of land required to support the use of those resources. Energy consumed, for example, was converted into the area of forest needed to soak up the carbon dioxide generated in its production, while food consumption was represented as the amount of farmland needed to make it. This method gave the match a footprint of 3051 hectares. [11.78 square miles - conversion table]