Forest Green Rovers have been pioneering a new approach to football for a long time. Labelled as 'the most environmentally conscious club in the world', they are now the smallest club and the first vegan club to be promoted to English footballs League One.
Forest Green Rovers secured their place in League One after a 0-0 draw against Bristol Rovers at the Memorial Stadium last Saturday. Before this season, Forest Green’s best-ever season was a fifth-place finish in League Two in 2018-19.
Founded back in 1889, Forest Green Rovers hit the headlines in 2015 when they announced the club would become 100% vegan. And they did. No animal products of any description are on sale anywhere at the club.
This new approach was surely championed by environmentalist and entrepreneur Dale Vince, who founded the UK's first green energy firm Ecotricity. Today, the company is the UK's only certified vegan electricity provider supplying around 200,000 households across the country.
Vince became a major shareholder of Forest Green Rovers FC in 2010 and three months later he was appointed club chairman. His entire Ecotricity empire — which includes supplying green energy, setting up electric car charging points, and a green mobile phone service — is vegan. So, when he realised red meat was on the menu for his players, he saw an opportunity.
In 2018 Vince spoke of the changes to the menu to Euronews, he said "We took white meat off the menu, then fish, and two seasons ago we went the final stretch and took off dairy. In the time since we’ve done that, food sales have quadrupled. What we focus on is great food. It’s handmade by a local chef, using local ingredients where we can, and we put a lot of love into the food. You don’t normally find that with football."
Their quest for sustainability goes much deeper
Everything about the Forest Green Rovers club is eco-friendly and sustainable. The players use recyclable tracksuits, reusable water bottles and they play on a pitch which is pesticide and weed killer free. Soon, they will move to a brand new low-carb wooden stadium.
Eco Park
The new home of Forest Green Rovers will provide seating for 5,000 fans and nestle in landscaped parkland with space for 1,700 cars. There will be two additional football pitches, including one with an all-weather 4G surface. The area will be planted with around 500 trees and 1.8km of planted hedgerows to promote biodiversity.
The stadium will be constructed almost entirely from wood – nature’s renewable building material and be powered by solar energy generated from panels on the stadium roof. The lawn will be irrigated with collected rain water and mowed with a GPS-directed solar powered mower.
Not only are Forest Green Rovers the first vegan football club, but they are also the first to be certified as carbon neutral by the United Nations.
We are constantly impressed by the efforts of everyone at this club. We hope that more football clubs will prioritise sustainability on their goal sheets.
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