FOOTBALL4GOOD MAGAZINE | MARCH 2020

For football club owner Dale Vince protecting the planet is more important than his team picking up football league points. During a recent interview with LBC’s Tom Swarbrick, the Forest Green Rovers chair- man came out in support of the obstructive methods of global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion. He praised the group’s willingness to “upset the sta- tus quo” following protests that brought European cities to a standstill amid the climate emergency. Testing Vince’s resolve Swarbrick probed the majority shareholder asking: “If climate change protestors decided to block people’s entrances to games, hitting you in the coffers, would you accept that because you see the wider principle?” “If they thought that would achieve some- thing, then yes,” answered Vince. Swarbrick’s next charge: what about if every home game was blocked? “Listen, if Forest Green Rovers is a major polluter causing climate extinction, then yes - we’d de- serve it,” said the resolute Vince, confirming he would even countenance the eventual disappear- ance of Forest Green entirely as “justified”. Amid the recent wildfires, flooding and subsequent Extinction Rebellion protests, environmental issues, climate change and sustainability remain a constant within the global news agenda. Described by FIFA as the “world’s greenest club”, Forest Green is perched at the vanguard of aligning “football and environmental con- sciousness in a way no other football club is doing right now”. By putting footprint before football and sustainability before points or profit, it poses the question whether Vince’s unique school of football ownership, aimed at ‘greening up football’, should form football’s own answer to climate change. The ‘little club on the hill’ has been recognised by the United Nations as the first carbon neutral SATURDAYS FUTURE: FOR FOOTBALL’S CARBON ‘BOOT PRINT’ AND THE CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL FAIR PLAY football club and is the first eligible to don the official 100% Vegan Trademark as awarded by The Vegan Society in 2015. Three years later, during COP24 in 2018, Forest Green Rovers be- came a founding member of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Sports for Climate Action Framework. Though hailing from Britain’s smallest town to host a professional football league team, for Forest Green Rovers size is only relevant regarding the club’s greater task at hand. From their Nailsworth home in rural Gloucestershire, with a population of only around 7,000, the club has managed to climb up the football league pyramid both within their financial and environmental means. At the heart of Vince’s mission lies a vision of creating “a truly sustainable football club.” Their model of sustainable performance - whereby success on and off the pitch aren’t mutually exclusive - is redefining the meaning of success within an industry commonly re- ferred to as the ‘results business’. Taking over the club in 2010, the ‘green energy industrialist’ found his early exploits in the industry revealed a world not aligned with his own beliefs. Though unimpressed by certain elements Vince felt were of a by-gone era, he saw huge potential. “We thought we could have some fun creating a green football club and speak to the wider world of sport,” he said, initially asking himself, ‘What if we could make football fans equally passionate about the environment?’ While the aim was simple, harnessing the tremendous power of football and pointing it towards tackling environmental issues had never been done before. Removing meat from the match day menu was the first major change of an ethos that attacks climate change via three main contributors: energy, travel, food. Given the rising trends of highly prominent players shifting to a plant-based diet in recent years, this may not seem revolutionary. Alongside Forest Green, superstars like Hector Bellerin and Leo Messi have openly praised the impact of a plant-based diet on their bodies for recovery and energy levels. Yet despite the growing numbers, these players are only a select few at the very top of the pro- fessional game. And unlike Forest Green, their message promoting veganism is one focusing more upon sustaining individual performance and less on environmental sustainability. Since becoming vegan, Forest Green’s so-called ‘Green Army’ has reached an estimated two billion people, raising questions on the impact of livestock farming on animal welfare and cli- mate change from within a footballing context. From the groundsman, to players, fans, and local schoolkids, the club has educated an audience accustomed to a burger at half time on the posi- tive impact of a plant-based diet on the environ- ment and football’s wider carbon footprint. Football clubs and the industry at large are big polluters. The game’s upkeep places its own strain on the planet. From keeping the pitch in top condition which requires large quantities of water, to heating the playing surface to prevent freezing, energy intensive lighting for grass growth, floodlights, video screens, scoreboards and thousands of fans travelling to and from matches - all of which emit carbon dioxide and generate copious amounts of waste. According to Life Tackle - an international project aimed at improving the environmental management of football matches - an average football fan generates 0.8 kilograms of rubbish per visit to a stadium. When scaled to all fans attending matches across Europe, the organi- sation estimates that this amounts to 750,000 tonnes of waste annually. Within the influx of changes at Forest Green in the last decade, alongside the vegan burgers came solar panels, electric car charging points, water recycling, an electric team bus and lawn- mower, an organic pitch free from pesticides, player shirts and shin pads made from bamboo, biodegradable shampoo, and eco-friendly soap in the toilets. All of which helped register a 30% decrease in CO2 emissions to 159.1 tonnes in the 2018/2019 season. BY SAM COOK ‘WHAT IFWE COULDMAKE FOOTBALL FANS EQUALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT?’