How Croke Park embeds sustainability into every event
For most visitors, Croke Park is synonymous with unforgettable sporting moments, sold-out concerts and major national occasions. Yet behind every match day and event is an operation that welcomes between 1.5 and 2 million visitors each year, requiring the same level of planning and coordination as a small town.
At the centre of that operation is a sustainability programme that has evolved over two decades, not as a standalone strategy, but as an integral part of how the stadium operates every day.
As Colin O’Brien explains, sustainability is no longer an initiative running alongside the business; it is embedded within it.
“We’re a very busy venue every day of the week, and sustainability is embedded in all of that. It’s in our culture, it’s ingrained in our day-to-day operations, our whole event management processes, our procurement, our social agenda… it’s second nature, really, to us now.”
Sustainability starts in the engine room
For many organisations, sustainability sits within corporate affairs or communications. At Croke Park, it sits much closer to the operational heart of the business.
Colin’s role spans facilities management, stadium operations and sustainability, giving him responsibility not only for developing initiatives but ensuring they work in practice.
“I’m very much on the ground… I’m in the engine room… I don’t just sit and write the policies in the office, so I have to physically implement them in the plant rooms, in the waste areas, in the service tunnels on an event day. That’s where the real magic happens.”
That operational perspective shapes how sustainability decisions are made throughout the organisation.
“Having one foot in facilities means you approach sustainability with almost like a builder’s mindset. You stop looking at carbon reduction as this abstract concept, and you start looking at it as almost an engineering challenge. How do I change things? How do I redesign things? Systems, processes…”
Whether transitioning the stadium’s backup power systems from diesel to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) or redesigning operational processes, every initiative must work under the pressures of an event attended by tens of thousands of people.
“If a sustainability initiative compromises the stadium’s operations on a match day in front of 80,000 people, well then, it’s not really a sustainable solution at all.”
Running a stadium like a small county
The scale of Croke Park presents unique sustainability challenges.
“In my world… we look at the stadium as a massive sort of living organism. When the stadium’s full, we have more people here than there would be… in eight of the counties in Ireland… It’s really like operating a large county.”
For Colin, the biggest environmental priorities come down to three key areas: waste, energy and supply chain. Waste was one of the earliest areas of focus.
“On a major match day… you have over 80,000 people coming through the turnstiles, so in the space of just a few hours they generate literally tons of waste… The opportunity we seized was turning that risk into… trying to set a standard, not just for ourselves, but other venues.”
Over time, Croke Park mapped every waste stream across the venue and developed systems to ensure every material is either recycled, composted or converted into energy.
Energy management presents a different challenge. Demand peaks dramatically during major fixtures and concerts as floodlights, kitchens, hospitality suites and building systems all operate simultaneously.
“Stadiums like ourselves, we’re energy giants… you have that two- or three-hour surge where everything’s running at its maximum, and you really need to be operating as efficiently as you can.”
The venue continues investing in energy efficiency projects, building management systems and lower-carbon backup power to improve performance during these periods of peak demand.
Making sustainability visible
While energy and waste projects often happen behind the scenes, biodiversity has become one of the most visible ways Croke Park engages people with sustainability.
Throughout the stadium campus, initiatives such as pollinator-friendly planting, swift boxes, bat boxes and rooftop beehives demonstrate that biodiversity has an important role to play, even within a highly urban environment.
“If you’re under the 80,000 people here on a match day, you’re probably not looking up at the walls looking for swift boxes, or bat boxes, or pollinator-friendly planting… but those hidden details are just as important.”
For Colin, these projects help connect people with sustainability in ways that technical reports often cannot.
“When you tell staff… visitors… or corporate clients that we have active beehives… producing local honey… or that swifts come back to the stadium each year to nest in our stadium walls, it immediately makes sustainability tangible. People sort of light up. They want to know more.”
More importantly, biodiversity reflects a broader philosophy.
“It proves sustainability isn’t just about doing less harm by cutting carbon. It’s about actively doing more good by giving back to the local environment.”
Raising ambition through science-based targets
Croke Park’s sustainability journey reached another milestone when its Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) targets were approved.
Rather than setting goals based on internal expectations, the organisation committed to a pathway aligned with climate science.
“Signing up to the SBTi… was the moment we stopped setting goals based on what we thought we could easily achieve. We started setting them based on… what the planet had actually required us to achieve.”
The process required a detailed assessment of emissions across the organisation, including Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.
For Croke Park, fan travel represents one of its biggest challenges.
“Fan travel obviously makes up, on a busy year for us, up to 90 percent of our Scope 3 carbon footprint… We were obviously going to include that… just to be as transparent as we could.”
That commitment to transparency has also changed how investment decisions are made.
“Every single operational decision now, every single investment has a carbon price tag attached to it… Today, the first question that’s asked now is, ‘How does this project align to our carbon reduction pathway?'”
Bringing suppliers on the journey
Supply chain engagement is another area where Croke Park has shifted its approach.
Rather than treating sustainability as an additional question within procurement, environmental and social performance now forms part of supplier evaluation alongside cost, quality and operational capability.
At the same time, Colin recognises that smaller suppliers often need support rather than additional pressure.
“Our approach… it’s never about penalising them… It’s about bringing them on the journey with us.”
Instead of expecting sophisticated sustainability reporting from every supplier, conversations focus on practical improvements.
“Are you willing to eliminate single-use plastics from your deliveries? Can you source your materials more locally? How can we work together to optimise things like deliveries and cut transport emissions?”
For Colin, helping smaller businesses build capability creates benefits far beyond Croke Park itself.
“The great thing is… by helping these smaller Irish businesses… you’re actually making them more competitive to win business elsewhere as well. So that creates a massive positive ripple effect with the local economy.”
After more than twenty years of continuous progress, Croke Park’s sustainability journey continues to evolve. Its experience demonstrates that meaningful change is achieved not through standalone strategies or reporting exercises, but by embedding sustainability into everyday operations, empowering people on the ground and finding practical solutions that work under real-world conditions.
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Dedicated to harnessing the power of storytelling to raise awareness, demystify, and drive behavioural change, Bronagh works as the Communications & Content Manager at the Institute of Sustainability Studies. Alongside her work with ISS, Bronagh contributes articles to several news media publications on sustainability and mental health.
