Sustainability and football: why the beautiful game is getting a green makeover

Ruth Styles

3rd August, 2011

In the second part of our sport and environment mini-series, Ruth Styles reports on the efforts some football clubs are making to turn the sport into an eco-friendly one, although there's still plenty to do

With everything from sex scandals to corruption allegations, the last six months haven’t been kind to the national game. Scandalous behaviour and Sepp Blatter aside, football remains one of the most lucrative – and most watched – games on the planet. But popularity has come with a price and it’s the environment that’s paying it. When the new season kicks off next weekend, some 700,000 fans will make the trip to one of the UK’s 40,000 clubs where they’ll watch a game played on emerald-green grass maintained using gallons of water, fertiliser and pesticides under floodlights in a power-hungry glass and steel stadium. Many will also head to one of the stadium’s cafes for a half time burger or pie, most of which will be mass produced. When they leave, it’s likely to be by car, or if it’s a long distance away game, by plane. With everything from food to transport included, the average Premier League football match creates an estimated 820 tonnes of carbon. That’s an awful lot of pie and chips.

For a sport widely seen as caring about little that goes on outside of the game, the last five years have seen a quiet revolution with everything from...

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