Southend United Football Club has teamed up with Business in the Community's The Prince's Mayday Network, the Football League Trust and the Environment Agency to showcase the excellent work going on behind the scenes at the club to promote and encourage environmental sustainability.
Southend United are just one of 72 clubs from the Coca-Cola Championship, the Coca-Cola League One and Coca-Cola League Two that is working equally hard off the pitch, through the Football League Clubs' Community Programmes, to reduce our environmental impact and support our local communities in doing so as well.
Dave Edmundson, General Manager of Football League Trust, said: "Environment is one of the FLT's core themes. By signing up to the Mayday network and both promoting the key messages together with showcasing good practices agreed in the Community scheme's environmental plan, Football League clubs are closely involved in influencing both their own club and more importantly, their communities in highlighting a subject that affects us all."
The main initiative run at Southend United is the Community Trust's 'Going Green with The Blues' programme, which was recently awarded Best Community Environmental Project at the Football League Awards held in London.
This programme has so far been delivered to over 20 schools with more schools due to participate during 2010 and helps teach children the importance of recycling and energy and resource conservation.
Southend United Football Club are also one of the leading clubs in the country when it comes to trialling the latest technology. Some of these initiatives have since been introduced to other clubs across the country and these include the introduction of a mobile phone ticketing system, which has seen vast reductions in the amount of paper and card used as well as other initiatives such as internet booking systems, plastic season cards and more.
Ben Duncan from Southend United Community & Educational Trust added: "Southend United play a major role in the local community and we wanted to ensure that we could help the Mayday Network anyway that we can and we are delighted to have signed up to the scheme.
"We recognise the value that is achieved from taking simple steps to reduce our environmental impact, both for the business and the local community. It also gives us a valuable network of other businesses to take inspiration from, and learn about other things we might implement to improve our operations even further in the future."
Business in the Community's Regional Director of the East of England, Mike Brophy
said: "This is an excellent example of how taking collaborative action on climate change and other environmental and social concerns can work and shows that it is not just limited to big corporate entities. Southend United are certainly widening the goalposts when it comes to embedding sustainable practices into football and the wider sporting world, and sets a great example for others to follow."
Business in the Community, the FLT and the Environment Agency will use the information gathered about all of the Football League Clubs' Community Programmes to develop a Vision for Sustainable Football that will become a blueprint for future best practice in the sector. This Vision will be launched in September.
The Prince's Mayday Network (www.maydaynetwork.com) is the UK's biggest collaborative business-led movement committed to tackling climate change. Businesses of all sizes can join The Mayday Network for free and access a range of practical support via the Mayday Journey and from a range of partners that will help reduce their carbon emissions.
