The Hamburg European Open
as a „Green Event“
Sustainability is a key concern for the Hamburg European Open. “We want to play a pioneering role in climate protection on the tennis tour worldwide. The sport of tennis has a lot of catching up to do on this issue,” says tournament director Sandra Reichel. In 2020 and 2021, the Hamburg European Open has been selected by Hamburg’s environmental authority for the “Sustainable Events” pilot phase. The other 22 events that took part in the initiative included the Hamburg Cathedral, the Reeperbahn Festival, the Hamburg Triathlon and Christopher Street Day. As part of the pilot phase, the Hamburg European Open team took part in various workshops organized by the “Green Events Hamburg” network (e.g. on the topic of waste), evaluated its own tournament and helped develop a CO2 calculator for the event industry.
“It is impossible to imagine the sports city of Hamburg without the tennis tournament at Rothenbaum. We are very pleased that such a traditional event with charisma beyond Hamburg is participating in our pilot phase for sustainable events. This shows that tradition, sport, climate protection and sustainability go well together.” (Jens Kerstan, Hamburg’s Senator for Environment and Energy)
The Hamburg European Open wants to become climate neutral in the coming years.
An overview of some of the measures we have taken so far:
- Our tennis stadium is powered 100 percent by green electricity.
- Our waste concept: Waste from the tournament will be sorted and processed at our waste partner Otto Dörner’s sorting facility.
- Our mobility concept: free use of public transport (HVV) for all ticket holders*; as in 2019, we will again book the “bicycle checkroom” for our visitors in 2022, so they can travel to the tournament site with bicycles and park their bikes safely and free of charge.
- Our players’ hotel can be reached on foot. A fleet of exclusively electric and hybrid vehicles will be used to shuttle the players* in 2022.
- Every year we increase our vegan food offer.
- Leftover food from our VIP catering company “Speisenwerft” (by Tim Mälzer) and our nutrition partner EDEKA are donated every evening to the Hamburger Tafel The EDEKA fruit from the previous day is made into smoothies.
- We use only compostable tableware for the players and our staff.
- All printed matter for the tournament is climate-neutral, and our daily tournament news “Rothenbaum Hawkeye” is only published in digital form.
- Green hosting: Our tournament website is “climate friendly”.
- For our merchandise, we pay attention to fair trade, ecology, recycling and regionality. For example, the label “Love:40”, which is based in the Rotherbaum district, “upcycles” our privacy tarpaulins from last year’s tournament into bags and other accessories.