Today is Sustainability and Climate Change Action Day!

Today is Sustainability and Climate Change Action Day!

Today, we encourage all football clubs, leagues and football associations to show their green initiatives.

Sustainability and Climate Change Action Day is the last day of the #Morethanfootball Action Weeks campaign that will run till April 17th,2023. During this day, all the football organizations share their sustainable-friendly ideas through CSR activities as part of their contribution towards sustainability.

The previous 19th EFDN #Morethanfootball Conference was again a European gathering for the Community and Social Responsibility (CSR) network. Check the aftermovie below:

During the conference in Seville, the United Nations correspondent, Daniel Johnson, presented his presentation called “Football for the Goals” in which he discussed the environment, affected by different factors.

“It’s all about sustainable development. We are often responding to emergencies, but we have to put in place the real structural foundations to make sure that we can help communities become resilient to the emergencies that we are seeing more and more, whether they are from wars which cause displacement. We are also seeing it from economic uncertainty, and we are also seeing it increasingly from climate change.”

Daniel Johnson, Football for the Goals United Nations

EFDN Initiatives

SDG Striker

SDG Striker is a project coordinated by Ecoserveis (ECO), a non-profit organisation specialised in environment and energy which has been working at the local and environmental level to promote sustainability since 1992 and is a leading reference in energy culture in Spain. The project is funded by the ERASMUS+ Programme of the European Union.

Its goal is to increase the organisational capacity for Good Governance in grassroots sports organisations by assisting them to implement and communicate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This will be achieved through ad hoc action at the local level so they can align themselves with European national and local public policy on the SDGs and by developing a joint understanding about best practices before, during and after being tested, and assess their potential for replication across the national federation and beyond national borders.

Greenfoot

GREENFOOT stands for GReen power and Energy Efficiency iNvestments community-Financed for football buildings. The central social innovation of GREENFOOT is to develop creative crowdfunding investment packages that allow sports fans and community members to partner with their favourite clubs to improve energy use, fight climate change and contribute to a cleaner local environment.

The concept is to finance football building energy efficiency renovations and renewable energy installations through a crowd-funding scheme that propels Europeans to become active participants in the energy transition through their love of football.

The Greenfoot project will develop and implement a community-based financing scheme for renovating football buildings including stadiums, practice facilities and related buildings (e.g. team headquarters, fitness centres) with energy efficiency and renewable energy measures.

Football for Climate Justice

Football for Climate Justice’ is a European project coordinated by the European Football Development Network (EFDN) and financially supported by the European Commission within the Erasmus+ programme. Within this project, which runs until June 2025, 10 European clubs & organizations are involved and will organize various actions and initiatives for 3 years to raise awareness of the ecological footprint within football.

Club Members and their Initiatives

Experience garden – Contribution by Vitesse Betrokken

Last Tuesday, Vitesse club went out to do various community activities. The selection, the staff and the personnel set out to dedicate themselves to the city of Arnhem and the surrounding area. At the Scalabor location, people got their hands dirty in the special ‘experience garden’ of Intratuin, which contributes to a green living environment. Fresh products are taken from this vegetable garden daily, which are used by the chef in restaurant De Proeftuin. Matúš Bero, Tomáš Hájek and Sondre Tronstad helped grow food in the experience garden. 

Reusable Drinking Cups – Contribution by KAA Gent

KAA Gent is taking another step in the green direction. As part of its sustainability strategy and the fight against plastic, the Belgian club will from now on use reusable drinking cups in the Ghelamco Arena. More than 1 million disposable cups will be saved annually.

In cooperation with manufacturer Goodless and brewer Alken-Maes, KAA Gent is introducing the Smart Cup for this purpose. These reusable cups are hard-drinking cups that replace disposable ones. As a result, they no longer end up in the rubbish bin immediately, but are reused after professional cleaning.

Willem II switches to sustainable hard cups
To combat the huge amount of plastic litter, the use of disposable plastic cups has been banned by the government from 1 January 2024 at events such as football matches. Therefore, the Koning Willem II stadium will switch to sustainable beverage cups as early as 21 April at Willem II – TOP Oss. The current single-use plastic cups will be replaced by reusable hard cups.

The new approach is a collaboration of Willem II with Bonheur Horeca Groep, AB INBEV and CWS Coffee Service. This makes the stadium the first in the Netherlands to ban single-use cups this season. This underlines the club’s ambitions when it comes to a more sustainable and cleaner stadium. In this way, together with the supporters, Willem II can already make a difference.

Club Members and their tweets

Partners

Sustainable Development Goals