Newsletter #5: Green Football Weekend Special
The campaign aims to be the biggest climate football moment to date
The innovative Green Football Weekend launched on Tuesday with over 80 of the UK’s top professional football clubs taking part.
It’s encouraging fans everywhere to take green actions for their club. If you only do one thing as a result of reading this, I hope it is to sign up to take action yourself! As the campaign website says …
“Every action we take counts. With millions of us across the country taking small steps together, we can make a huge difference”.
Until 5 February these green actions will score points for clubs. The club with the most points will win the inaugural Green Football Cup, and, as an extra incentive for fans, everyone who takes part will have the chance to win prizes.
It’s really good to see there are also resources specifically for schools and that those involved in grassroots football are being encouraged to take part too. Alongside this there are are an impressively broad range of people and partners showing support. Here’s more about it and how to take part …
Green Football Weekend runs until the 5 February and there is more news and events to be expected in the coming days, so keep an eye out for that, all before the big weekend itself. In the meantime, it’s good to see the competitive spirit amongst fans already kicking in with the club leaderboard showing regular changes in rankings and increasing numbers day by day.
This goes to show the campaign has already lived up to its aim of being the biggest climate football moment to date, and it’s a no-brainer that this weekend should become an annual fixture. The feedback and data gathered from this first campaign will no doubt help future weekends go from strength to strength. And as mentioned in the 2023 Forward Look, as we increasingly learn from and share information about campaigns happening globally, perhaps we can see this going international in the future?
In brief …
Bridging the gap between inequalities and sustainability in grassroots football was a guest post published here to coincide with the launch of Green Football Weekend. It tells the story of how Leicester Nirvana FC are aiming to be the UK’s first amateur football club to become net zero carbon.
Deloitte published their Football Money League 2023. It noted that only four of twenty clubs in the Money League are signed up to the United Nation’s Sport for Climate Action Framework and stated that they …
“hope that great swathes of signatories from within football – and across the Money League …. increasingly embark on a journey of net zero transformation and beyond: both because they understand its importance, but also as pressure from stakeholders such as fans, partners, investors and regulators intensifies.”
The flights by Nottingham Forest to and from a game with Blackpool drew attention to the issue of clubs flying to and from games more generally, and an impassioned call for change that gained widespread interest.
The UK Government White Paper on Football Governance is due any day now. It will be interesting to see if it includes anything on environmental sustainability.
I’m hoping to have a couple more guest posts coming soon here. So watch out for those alongside these regular fortnightly newsletter round-ups.
In the meantime, if you would like to propose writing a guest post please drop us a line. The more this newsletter can do to support and help amplify the great work that is happening on football and sustainability, the better!
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
@fbandclimate
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com