Far away from the super stadiums of Barcelona’s Nou Camp and Wembley Stadium in London,
here you’ll find soccer being done ‘Another Way.’
The New Lawn is home to Forest Green Rovers, officially the world’s greenest football club.
Located in the tiny town of Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, England,
Forest Green play in the fourth tier of English football
and are the smallest club to ever play in the professional leagues.
But they’re top of the table when it comes to being carbon-neutral,
as now recognized by FIFA and the United Nations.
And there’s clear, clean energy evidence all around the ground.
Solar panels? Check.
Wind turbine? Yep.
Electric car charging points? Got that too.
And even a robot gardener who looks after the world’s only organic, vegan football pitch.
It’s all electric, and it’s GPS-mapped so you can track where it goes.
And it’s all fed off the solar panels on the top of the south stand.
I think it only uses 1.4% of the solar panels, which is about £50 of electricity a year.
It’s cheap, it’s easy, it saves me six to eight hours a week in work.
Away from the pitch, the club is totally vegan.
And its food has the seal of approval from the Vegan Society.
A lot of it’s not actually greasy because it’s not meat, but it still gives that vibe of football food,
what people like to just munch on when they’re watching the game.
Fans heading here to New Lawn on a match day don’t get the chance to have a meat pie or greasy hamburger.
Instead, it’s a far healthier football feast.
The players as well have been embracing the dietary requirements
and even buying into the idea that it could boost their performances.
I’ve got a lot more energy. I recover quicker which is of utmost importance
because we’re in full-time training, and my stamina’s improved.
Well I’m used to it now. I’ve been here for two years, and I’ve had the best two years of my career.
On and off the pitch I’ve been feeling really good.
I suppose a lot of it’s to do with the football club and the way it's run.
It’s a vision that comes from one of soccer’s most unique chairmen.
Self-confessed former-hippie, turned clean energy millionaire, Dale Vince.
Today 30% of Britain’s energy comes from renewable energy already, that’s increasing.
Electric cars are on the verge of taking over the roads, and veganism has become a really popular thing.
And this football club has all of those elements in it, and it’s a great vehicle for getting the message out.
Vince is also the founder and owner of clean energy company Ecotricity,
which is where the football club gets 100% of its power from.
It’s all straightforward stuff, like single-use plastics.
We just looked at the containers that we have for coffee, for example.
And we found some that have a cornstarch liner instead of plastic
that we could recycle ourselves in a compost heap. So we made the change to no single-use plastics.
The UN’s Climate Neutral Now scheme wants to use Forest Green as the blueprint
for other sports organizations to follow, and there’s a belief that its recognition will prompt change.
The actions to implement are rather easy these days. It’s easy to do it. It just takes a decision.
We see that sports organizations of all types and sizes are now very
aware of the potential that they have to influence others,
and they have an impact also on environment and climate.
So we hope that the Forest Green Rovers will be a nice example of how and what they could do.
There is other evidence that teams are starting to make greener changes too.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizers have pledged a commitment to 100% renewable power.
Premier League soccer teams Arsenal and Newcastle
aim to run their stadiums completely from renewable energy.
And plastic straws were banned from Wimbledon’s tennis championships in 2018,
switching to paper ones to go with that classic glass of Pimms.
The ambition for this club is to move up through England's football divisions.
With their ultimate goal to take their eco-friendly message to the next level,
and move into the world's first purpose-built all-wooden stadium.
Hi guys, Adam here. Hope you enjoyed the video.
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