Ecotricity and Forest Green Rovers

The Background

Ecotricity got involved with FGR last August (2010) - for a mixture of reasons part social and part environmental. 

FGR Chairman, Dale Vince at Ecotricity's Nymspfield turbine

Forest Green Rovers is an important part of the local community in Stroud (where we’re based) and a significant employer.  It’s a football club with serious heritage too, being over 100 years old.   It needed saving, it was local to us, and we were able – those were the first three ingredients.  The compelling final ingredient was the opportunity to use football as a ‘new channel’ for our message, for our work - which is about sustainability and bringing it to all walks of life.  It’s about greening up Britain. 

At FGR we have the opportunity to create a truly sustainable football club, which would be a world first.  Somewhere we can demonstrate all of our thinking and technology, and through that engage with a new, large and passionate audience.  A global audience ultimately.  It’s the chance to introduce some Eco into the world of sport, and not just football – as we’ve quickly discovered through our link up with Gary Neville and Sustainability in Sport. 

Greening up Football

We’re going to make FGR the most sustainable football club in Britain, probably the world. Work has begun to achieve the ISO 14000 environmental standard and subsequent Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) qualification - the gold standard in environmental performance. Only 69 organisations in the whole of the UK have achieved EMAS by the way.  Ecotricity already has both ISO 14000 and EMAS.  In the world of football, no club has these.  These systems enable measurement, targeting – and reporting on all key environmental impacts.

Some of the Eco initiatives in hand at FGR are these:

• For pitch irrigation we are collecting the water from under the pitch to recycle back. Next we will collect rainwater from the stadium rooftops, and sink a borehole to reach the local spring water.  Our pitch will thus be irrigated by a mixture of rain, drain and spring water – and we hope this will make it independent from the water main. 
• The pitch itself is going organic, that work began this month.  We’re working with the Soil Association (a long term partner of ours) to achieve their Organic Mark – as well as to develop an approach to the certification of organic sports pitches that they can promote themselves – an area they are keen to expand into. This is a world first.
• We’re working with another company to develop an LED Floodlight solution – no such product exists in the world today.  This will create a highly visible demonstration of the latest energy saving light technology – as you probably know it’s far superior to ‘low energy light bulbs’.  Our floodlights will also be intelligent, adjusting their power level according to ambient light levels.
• We have some Solar PV planned (of course).  A ground based tracker system and roof mounted systems also.  The ground mounted system is highly visible and accessible in a way the roof mounted systems are not – its purpose is to be seen and to be a part of the environmental technology on display.  Solar trackers follow the sun, east to west and through its azimuth – they’re high tech and dynamic.
• Then there’s food and drink.  We're working towards the Soil Association Food for Life - Gold standard (we’ve got to Silver already).  This involves using very high percentages of local and organic food.  It’s about real food.  And it’s about 'localisation', demonstrating the principle and benefits of us all shopping locally  - and eating better.  The link is performance: footballers are athletes, fans look up to them.  Our team and our fans are fed the same food.
• Last autumn we took Red Meat off the club menus, and achieved National and International coverage (and plaudits) for the move.  Over time the food at the club will become vegetarian then vegan, for strong environmental and health reasons.  This will be a bold statement and unique positioning.

These are the more major steps we’ll take or are already taking.  Oh, and there’s an electric tractor in the mix, not to forget that.

A green football club is a unique identity.  And a very strong one (we’ve seen that already from our early steps). It will enable us to project the name of Forest Green Rovers and our Eco message far and wide.

More than football

Our plan is to create an eco venue alongside and within the sporting venue, along the lines of our Ecotech centre in Norfolk.  We’ll host AGMs, conferences, training days, weddings, and so on - where the added attraction is the environment centre – the football club that is a working demonstration of sustainable living.  This will be a place also for schools to visit and base lessons around – we know from our work at Ecotech just how popular such a thing is.  And just up the road we have our first windmill, enabling shuttle hop visits to big wind technology. 

The creation of an eco - education/venue/visitor centre at the New Lawn will project not just the Eco message but the name and reputation of FGR to a wider and more diverse audience – both these activities will support each other.  The football club and the eco centre will together be stronger than the sum of their parts.