The Deutsche Bank Ladies Swiss Open is the highest scoring event in the virtues domain according to the Sustainability Golf Index, a benchmark survey of 72 European golf events from the European Tour, the Challenge Tour, the Ladies European Tour and the Senior Tour.

The Deutsche Bank Ladies Swiss Open was one of the first golf tournaments worldwide to create a strategy on sustainability issues.

Key indicators in the survey, operated by the Dutch company ‘Between-us’, were multi-stakeholder environment, awareness of the audience, sustainability strategy, carbon emissions and accessibility for wheelchairs.

Started in 2009, with the use of shuttle buses and energy-efficient vehicles, the program has been developed further since then, with a strong emphasis on local providers and protecting biodiversity on the golf course.

The Deutsche Bank Ladies Swiss Open has demonstrated good sustainable development by calculating and off-setting the carbon emissions of the tournament.

"Every event, however, will always produce a certain amount of emissions that are unavoidable, regardless of the level of effort put forth," according to Tournament Director, Hanns Michael Hoelz. “Thus it is ensured, that we will see first-class golf during the Deutsche Bank Ladies’ Swiss Open, without polluting the environment.”

A wide range of initiatives are being put in place to reduce the carbon footprint of this, the sixth edition of the event at Golf Gerre Losone, including waste reduction, using more energy efficient transportation and traffic management, using renewable energy sources and using local, organic, food products.

According to the Sustainability Golf Index, only 2.8% of events include sustainability in the visitor survey and just 9.7% of events measure the carbon footprint.

Sustainability is a theme that is becoming ever more important in all areas of business and consumers are eager to see sponsors showcasing responsible environmental management whilst delivering a world class sporting event.