Bolton Wanderers will join clubs across the country in celebrating Green Football Weekend at our upcoming home fixture against Barnsley.
Green Football Weekend aims to unleash the power of football to tackle climate change and bring together fans, clubs, leagues, broadcasters and partners to take action on climate change.
Bolton Wanderers Supporters’ Trust have been encouraging supporters of the Whites to score ‘green goals’ in a bid to climb up the Green Football Weekend leaderboard and to help protect our world.
Wanderers fans have so far scored 46 goals by taking climate-friendly actions, including downloading the Green Football Weekend Veggie Cookbook, trying a veggie meal, leaving the car at home and using reusable bottles.
Fans can choose, register and track their goals at www.greenfootballweekend.com.
In support of Green Football Weekend, our very own first team chef James Berry has put together a fabulous veggie recipe – Panko Cauliflower Katsu. A favourite of the players, why not try out James’ recipe here:
There will also be special vegetarian food options available in the Fan Zone for Saturday's game!
And across the club, Wanderers are looking at different ways to help save the planet and smarten up on our green credentials. Here are just a few examples:
New base flow units for the purchase of half-time pints have been installed on the concourses using reusable cups. There are now drop-off points for fans to dispose of the cups so they can be used again by the club. In addition, there is now no plastic cutlery used on a match day with silver service utilised in hospitality areas and wooden forks on concourse kiosks.
Electric charging points have also been added to the stadium car parks and some of the club’s vehicle fleet are now fully electric.
As part of our Environmental Policy, we work closely with our waste provider, Kennys, to separate cardboard, grass, food and glass waste. In line with their core values of ‘recover, divert from landfill, recycle’, Kennys are the leading independent total waste management business in Manchester and are proud to report a 99% diversion from landfill.
Wanderers are also looking atwater usage, with Ureco devices installed in Level 0 concourse and admin area urinals. The Ureco is an eco-friendly innovation that substantially reduces the amount of water used to run the facilities, and the club has already recorded a reduction of 8% of water usage.
In addition, a Smartflush system installed in Level 3 concourse urinals has stopped uncontrolled flushing between match and event days and has resulted in an over 20% reduction in water usage across the stadium.
Even our football kits are made entirely from Eco Fabric, a polyester material 100% derived from recycled plastic – meaning 13 x 0.5lt bottles were recycled and used in every shirt.
Finally, over the coming year, we are committed to changing over our lighting to LED to save precious resources.
The future of football is at risk due to the effects of climate change, with 150,000 games per year already cancelled due to pitch flooding. By 2050, a quarter of UK football grounds will be flooded, with one in four teams expecting partial or total stadium flooding each year.
But when fans and clubs come together to take action, football has incredible power to help protect our world. If the UK’s football fans ate one veggie meal a day, it would save as much carbon as taking 5.5 million cars off the road.
Find out more about Green Football Weekend here.