There is an ecological team that wins on many fronts: it is called One Green Rovers and is the world’s first “zero emissions” club. What’s more, he is also achieving great results on the football field, as he prepares for promotion to League One, the third division of English football.
The birth and transformation of the “greenest team in the world”
Football and environmental sustainability: It’s an odd mix, but it’s operating around New Lawn Stadium, which is home to the Rovers in the town of Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, south-west England. It all started in 2011 with the arrival of Dale Vince, founding owner and green energy entrepreneur of Ecotricity Company. Since then, the club has started working on the ecosystem of the pitch. This involved the establishment of a completely organic soil. Not to mention the team jersey: recycled from coffee grounds and plastic bottles. And by the way: The club has been completely vegetarian since 2015 – in fact, everything from half-time cakes to the players’ pre-match meals is plant-based – with players, staff and spectators no exception. But Rovers’ great attention to sustainability and the environment has also led to an electrical breakthrough: about 180 solar panels have been installed on the stadium’s roof, helping the club generate 10% of the electricity needed for the pitch. It goes without saying that the team runs by electric bus. In fact, Forest Green has introduced the first lawnmower robot that the English club has used to take care of its stadium. His name? Athesia. Thanks to GPS technology, it is able to move around the pitch without the need for human intervention and buys energy directly from the stadium’s solar panels. As you can guess, there is a maximum and concrete focus on ecological causes.
only vegetarian footballer
Year after year, Forest Green – in name and in fact – is attracting more and more attention from detractors and the international media. Many people want to know, want to know, the secret of this club. TV crews arrived from Germany, Mexico and the United States, all specially arrived to tell the story of One Green. Joe, thanks to being promoted on the pitch, will be able to show everyone else that football and sustainability can happily co-exist together. In fact, adopting the club lifestyle changes your perspective, as footballer Nicky Caden, who joined the club only last year, told the BBC. “I began to think more about what I’m eating in my body, now that I eat more tofu as a substitute for meat. Since I moved here – admits 25-year-old Scott – I did a lot of research I never thought about climate change. It was such a big problem until I started to understand it. It’s a big problem. We only have one planet, and if we don’t take care of it ‘So what? Hopefully we can continue to climb the championship and carry the message with us”. A strong and clear message came from the top levels of FIFA and the English Premier League, committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2040 Huh.
future projects
And even if Forrest Greene may not rise to the top of British or world football in a few years, in the meantime another great goal is already being reached: that of getting the world involved, on and off the pitch, to the voices of primates against the climate crisis. of the game in battle.
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