Online Casinos Greener аnd More Environmentally Friendly Than Land-Based Ones – Discussion

We are living in an age of climate crisis. No corner of the world is immune from the devastating impact of climate change, with rising temperatures fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food and water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict and terrorism.

In recent years we have witnessed sea levels rising causing coral reefs to bleach and die, the Arctic slowly melting as well as our oceans acidifying and our forests burning, making climate change the defining emergency of our time on earth. Every business and every industry across the globe is being challenged to become more environmentally friendly and take active steps to be greener.

So with that in mind we are going to examine whether real money online casinos actually provide a greener and more environmentally friendly option to traditional land-based casinos.

• Environmental issues with traditional land-based casinos
• Positives of traditional land-based casinos
• What could land-based casinos do to become greener?
• Environmental issues with online casinos
• Positives of online casinos

Environmental issues with traditional land-based casinos

Traditional land-based casinos had been the only option for gamblers for centuries, from stories of the Ancient Greeks playing games of chance to the early gambling establishments known as saloons in America during the early 20th century. Gambling in Macau has been legal since the 1850s when the Portuguese government legalized the activity in the autonomous colony, with the city and special administrative region of China going on to become known worldwide as the ‘gambling capital of the world’.

In the United States gambling was legalized throughout the state of Nevada in 1931, where the country’s first legalized casinos were set up. Following the Second World War, a number of lavish hotels, gambling casinos and high-profile entertainment venues grew Las Vegas into what it is today. In 1976 New Jersey allowed gambling in Atlantic City, which has gone on to become the US’s second-largest gambling city.

The rest of the world has followed suit with significant sites in places like Singapore, Monte Carlo, Australia, South Korea and the UK. This growth in land-based casinos has had a sizable impact on the environment, given they take up a large amount of space, affect the surrounding areas, attract lots of people and trash and have a large carbon footprint.

Below we are going to examine the environmental problems land-based casinos cause in more detail.

Casinos take up space

Casinos are not usually small, meaning they take up a lot of land. The Bellagio in Las Vegas is reportedly the same size as 87 American Football pitches, while the Venetian Macao is currently the largest casino in the world with a total gaming space of 550,000 square feet. The sheer size of these large buildings take a toll on the local environment, eroding the soil they are built on and taking away space from structures that could be more sustainable.

Affect the surrounding areas

Casinos take up extra space with parking lots so that players can drive to sites easily, with some even specially building road features like highway junctions in order to make their access easier. These projects are often funded by wealthy owners, while casinos tend to be based in prime locations in the center of cities taking away land that could be used for more environmentally-friendly causes. Critics say casinos directly link to the gentrification of central areas, such as the case of Rivers Casino in Philadelphia. In this instance local residents came together to block construction in 2008.

In areas where the local infrastructure just isn’t set up for a new casino there can be other environmental hazards such as traffic jams. In 1991 a new casino opened in Colorado causing local residents to be affected by large amounts of traffic that blocked routes and created mayhem on the roads.

A study of the viewpoints of local residents of Cheju Island in South Korea found that the levels of residential satisfaction towards the community’s environment influenced their attitudes towards casinos – basically those who were more satisfied with the environment had more positive feelings toward casinos.

Attract lots of people and trash

Casinos are known for drawing in a lot of people to their sites, with 33 million people visiting French casinos in 2017 alone. Even away from hotspots like Las Vegas, Macau and Atlantic City, numbers are high with the Netherlands recording six million gambling visits in 2017. These people have an impact on the local area in the form of trash, noise and often bodily fluids if they are drinking whilst gambling.

Have a large carbon footprint

All these people traveling to casinos will have an impact on the environment too, whether that is driving or in some cases flying in. Nearly 39 million people visited Las Vegas in 2022 – many of whom solely for gambling – which has a serious knock-on effect to the environment.

Perhaps a bigger impact is the energy needed to power all the games and flashing lights. Electricity is a vital component to a casino’s operation, from lighting the premises to powering slot games. Las Vegas’ casino power consumption is thought to see the average establishment generate an electricity bill of over $350,000 every month.

Positives of traditional land-based casinos

It is important to consider the benefits of land-based casinos after outlining how bad they can be for the environment. There have been a number of studies that have shown how casinos produce some positive local environmental outcomes, including instances where natural environments have been protected as well as historical buildings and cultural heritage sites being conserved. We have also seen the improvement of public transportation, upgrades in electrical facilities, higher medical standards, revitalization of city landscapes and increases in recreational playgrounds.

The establishment of casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey for example led to the redevelopment of tourism industries, convention facilities, foundational infrastructures and tourist capacities in the region. Naturally gambling hotspots bring in huge numbers of money to the local economy – the Las Vegas Strip is worth around $7 billion in revenue annually while gambling in Macau makes up about half of the economy.

In recent years there have been some positive examples of casinos rolling out green initiatives such as Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands casino where the planners made sure to incorporate a number of eco-friendly features into the casino’s design such as a huge glass lobby facade that actually reduce electricity usage, a green roof that conserved energy and even a special rainwater fountain.

In 2021, MGM Resorts turned to a 100-megawatt solar array in a move considered to be the most notable renewable casino energy success story in the gambling industry. The solar array powers the entire resort including the casino with solar energy, while they also replaced 1.3 million light bulbs with LED bulbs saving nearly $10 million every year in expenditure.

What could land-based casinos do to become greener?

In the future it would be great to see more land-based casinos taking it upon themselves to develop and implement green initiatives to ensure we are seeing more eco-friendly casinos.

Here we take a look at what could be done to make more green casinos:

• Energy efficiency: Sites can reduce their energy usage by utilizing energy-efficient technologies such as LED lighting as well as using renewable energy sources like solar or wind power to power their operations.
• Water conservation: Sites can reduce their water usage by utilizing water-efficient technologies such as low-flow toilets and faucets, reclaimed or recycled water for non-potable uses such as landscaping and cooling systems.
• Waste reduction: Sites can reduce waste by implementing recycling programs and reducing the amount of paper and plastic used in their operations. Other options include donating excess food to local charities and composting food waste.
• Transportation: Sites can encourage employees and visitors to use alternative transportation methods by rewarding public transit, cycling and carpooling. They can also provide plenty of electric vehicle charging stations to promote the use of electric cars.
• Green building design: Sites can design and build their facilities with sustainable materials and construction methods such as using recycled materials, passive solar design and green roofs.
• Sustainable sourcing: Sites can purchase products and supplies from environmentally responsible vendors and choose products with minimal packaging.

Environmental issues with online casinos

It’s easy to assume that online sites represent more environmentally friendly casinos than their land-based brothers because they don’t take up physical space, attract large crowds of people and generate waste. However, while they do use much less energy than land-based sites, online casinos are still big energy consumers for the following reasons.

Data centers

The companies who run online casinos rely on server rooms – also known as data centers – which are often big physical facilities that are full of computing resources known to be energy guzzlers. Not only do these require lots of energy to run but they also need advanced cooling methods to be equipped on them in order to prevent overheating. Recent data predicts that centers like this will contribute more than 3% of all global carbon emissions by 2025, with this number expected to double every four years thereafter.

Energy consumption

Every time a player uses their computer or mobile phone to access an online casino in the USA they are consuming energy, while the employees of these sites need power to work. Often live casinos stream 24 hours a day in real-time, meaning management of these websites have to be powering studios at every hour of the day and night. While it’s clear that online casinos do not consume energy at the level of land-based sites, their energy usage is going up every year.

Fewer eco contributions

Most online casinos do not invest in the local infrastructure of the places they are licensed under or use alternative energy sources. Major licensing authorities that online casinos subscribe to such as the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA), Curacao eGaming and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) have very few green policies for sites to follow.

Positives of online casinos

However, despite a general lack of guidance from authority bodies for online casinos to follow there are some entities within the iGaming world that are being more eco-conscious.

Environmental focus

NetEnt is a leading software provider for online casinos who started to release their own annual sustainability reports from 2017, which include a ‘Green code of conduct’ outlining plans to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and follow the UN’s Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This sets a great example to other operators in the industry to be more transparent about their inner practices and thinking greener, even if they haven’t published a report since 2019.

International Gaming Technology (IGT) is another major provider of software and casino games who create their own sustainability report. Most of their measures relate to responsible gambling but their 2020 report did include a detailed section on ‘caring for the environment’, which outlined plans for energy consumption and waste treatment.

There are other companies than just NetEnt and IGT who are taking action to make the online gambling sector greener, but overall the industry needs to do a lot more to be able to describe itself as eco-friendly.

Use cloud-based technology

Online casinos are increasingly utilizing cloud-based technology to reduce their energy consumption. By using these platforms, data processing and storage requirements of a site can be reduced significantly allowing them to save a bundle on energy.

Virtual reality technology helps further reduce the environmental impact of online casinos as VR requires far less computing power than traditional methods, while some sites even use AI-powered systems to ensure their games are as efficient as possible.

Rewards for eco-friendly payment methods

Some online casinos offer special rewards for their players who use eco-friendly payment methods such as e-wallets to make deposits on their sites. This can come in the form of free spins and bonus cash and help incentivize players to make green choices when it comes to their gaming experience.

Overall it seems clear that online casinos are generally greener and more environmentally friendly than land-based casinos, although they must continue to employ green practices to ensure things stay that way and become sustainable in the future.