Kicking ahead

The beautiful game plays the green card – but Mark Hillsdon wants more

What’s your carbon ‘footyprint?’

It was only ever a matter of time before someone latched on to that slogan. And this season it was picked up to front a campaign by FA Cup sponsors E.ON, in a bid to make football’s oldest competition carbon-neutral.

“Just getting to and from games will contribute over half of the CO2 produced by this year’s FA Cup tournament”

When it comes to greenhouse gases, everything from stadium buildings to floodlights to catering and waste management must come under scrutiny, but travel remains football’s greatest own goal. Just getting to and from games will contribute over half of the estimated 45,000 tonnes of CO2 produced by this year’s FA Cup tournament – but ten fans travelling by bus or train every time instead of car could cut a tonne off that. So the campaign, based on fans logging onto a website and making pledges, is big on car sharing and using public transport, as well as ideas like turning off the TV at home and watching games with friends in the pub instead. When the maths is done following this month’s final, the sponsors anticipate that some 45,000 pledges will have offset around 10% of the emissions.

A few weeks after they turn the lights out at Wembley, Euro 2008 kicks off. This is now the world’s third largest sporting event, and co-hosts Austria and Switzerland are set to build on the green gains made at the 2006 football World Cup in Germany [see ‘Slipping into neutral’]. They’ve developed a sustainability charter that includes a commitment to free public transport on match days; sponsors are also being asked to ensure their guests go ‘carbon neutral’, and there are on-going discussions about ways in which national teams can offset their carbon footprint as they jet into Salzburg and Berne. A similar green push at the next World Cup in South Africa in 2010 aims to get stadiums harnessing more renewable power, and host cities developing improved low-carbon public transport systems.

But despite this green awareness on the international stage, there’s a distinct lack of cut and thrust at club level. Of the 20 clubs in the English Premiership, only Manchester City take their carbon footprint seriously. A wind turbine now produces all their electricity [see ‘Blues go green’], and in Pete Bradshaw they have the sole social responsibility manager in the league.

“We recognise that we grew out of the community and not out of industry,” he says. “So if we ignore things like transport problems, recycling, and our own waste management, then what we are actually doing is sticking a finger up at the very people that support us.”

Many of the richest, most successful clubs have lost this link with local supporters. Winning, or sometimes simply surviving, is now all that matters and sustainability rarely makes it off the subs’ bench.

In the lower leagues the local fan base does remain more intact. “It’s really important for clubs like us to be central to the local community,” says Nottingham Forest’s Brandon Furse. “Then if we do the right things we can have a positive influence on our fans too.” Forest have a green energy tariff, and plan to let the council use the club car park as part of a unique park-and-cycle scheme. They’re also vociferous champions of supporters using public transport to get to games. Similarly, Ipswich Town launched a campaign last season to get supporters to pledge energy savings – sponsored by E.ON, who rewarded every pledge by putting money into the club’s transfer kitty [see ‘Ipswich makes the switch’].

But you have to drop way down through the divisions to the amateur Ryman League to find Britain’s most sustainable club – in Dartford. Their Princes Park Stadium is the most eco-friendly yet, with a green sedum roof, solar panels, and two purpose-built lakes to store rainwater for watering the pitch. The whole site – built with help from an enlightened council – has even been sunk two metres into the ground to cut noise and light pollution. Club co-chairman Bill Archer reports proudly that “we’ve had lots of other non-league teams coming to visit us, taking photos and finding out how they can introduce some of the things we’ve done”. Perhaps it’s time the Premiership clubs took notice too, and planned their own trips round the M25 to Dartford. – Mark Hillsdon

Click here to read how sport is going green in the US.

19 March 2008

Mark Hillsdon