The West Ham United Foundation are excited to be supporting Britain’s biggest climate action football campaign, the Planet League Cup.
This initiative brings together 76 professional clubs, 15 County FAs, hundreds of grassroots football clubs and schools to engage fans on climate action.
Kicking off on Monday10 October, the Planet League Cup will last for five weeks and will encourage football fans across the country to undertake climate friendly activities in order to score goals for their club. Each week focuses on a particular theme, such as energy, food or travel, with the club whose fans scoring the most goals, taking home the Planet League Trophy. As well as scoring for their clubs, fans will also compete for individual glory with the champion winning a holiday in the UK.
Some of the climate friendly activities include walking or riding to school, cooking a meat-free meal, picking up litter and reusing water bottles. Through Planet League’s virtual assistant referee (VAR) system, whereby fans prove their actions by uploading photographs to the the Planet League website, goals will subsequently be logged and automatically adjust the league table.
Although these activities may seem small, when repeated and combined with actions taken by fans up and down the country, they can have a substantial impact. More than ten billion plastic bottles are used each year in the UK alone. This equates to 150 bottles and 40kg of CO2 emissions per person. Although recycling can work, most materials get dumped in landfill offshore. In other words, an action as simple as refilling a water bottle can significantly reduce your carbon footprint.
Another way in which fans can reduce environmental impact is through their eating habits. Despite 8.4 million people in the UK suffering from food poverty, an estimated 9.5 million tonnes of food get wasted each year, one of the worst figures per capita in the world.
Organising your fridge with ‘eat-me first’ boxes can ensure more of your food gets consumed before it goes off which can help reverse this trend, as well as score goals for your team. In addition, with meat and dairy responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gases, cooking meat-free meals is another environmentally friendly activity which will score you goals in the kitchen.
At last year's Planet League’s Cup 26 event, West Ham United were the best performing team in the Premier League and achieved fifth place overall. Though it was a team effort with lots of individuals, families, groups and schools taking part, an enormous amount of points were scored by Quilters Junior School in Essex. A group of Year 6 pupils from the school were later commended by centre-forward Michail Antonio who organised a video-call to congratulate the students for their efforts.
“I’m a big believer in being green and obviously looking after the world.” said Antonio. “I feel like it’s not something just do for now it’s something to do for the rest of your life. The earth is our home, the earth is where we live and so if you look after the earth, the earth will look after us.”
To get involved in the Planet League Cup and help West Ham United climb to the top of the Planet League table. visit planetleague.co.uk.