The Carbon Trust is urging British football clubs to improve their performance and compete for the top spot in the sustainability league. A letter has been sent out to all teams in the Premier League, Football League and Scottish Premier League asking them to kick out carbon emissions and secure a victory for the environment and their finances.
Four football clubs have already attained the Carbon Trust Standard – Bradford City, Bolton Wanderers, Manchester United, and Newcastle United. The Football Association (FA), including the new Wembley Stadium has also been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard. The successful clubs along with the FA have managed to achieve the Standard by taking action to reduce their own carbon footprints, and making a commitment to achieve carbon reductions year-on-year.
The combined club carbon savings certified to the Carbon Trust Standard total nearly 8,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to approximately £1.2 million in energy savings. Football clubs can act as an inspiration and as role models to their fans and local communities by demonstrating a commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency within their own operations.
Founder of Sustainability in Sport and Sky Sports pundit, Gary Neville, says: “Football clubs and indeed the wider sporting community are in a very privileged position to influence and inspire generations of fans to live more sustainably. Reducing our impact on the environment is an important area for everyone to act on and we must learn new ways of doing things. Of course this cannot be a solely virtuous effort and we must recognise that football clubs are also businesses so need to see commercial benefits in taking action on climate change. However, encouragingly, we see from clubs like those achieving the Carbon Trust Standard that by taking action on carbon they can not only improve their environmental standing but also be more efficient and save money.”
Darran Messem, Managing Director of Certification at the Carbon Trust, comments: “Football clubs have relatively small carbon footprints compared to other industries, however they exert a huge level of influence. By demonstrating their own action on sustainability they can show leadership and encourage others, whether businesses or fans, to see the benefits of taking action.”
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Gary Neville (left) and Tom Delay, Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust.