Forest Green Rovers Named World's Greenest Football Club

Thinking about going green and improving the rate at which you recycle different products and packaging?

With the temperature in different countries increasing all the time due to the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, there couldn't be a more important time to stop unnecessarily throwing away products such as paper, cardboard, glass bottles and jars etc. If you're thinking about turning over a new leaf and increasing the rate at which you recycle, it could be easier said than done. That's according to one group of waste and recycling experts. That's because many major football clubs are languishing at the bottom of the table when it comes to acting responsibly.

Football is not only the most popular sport to watch in the United Kingdom but is also rated as the most popular to participate in meaning that many people tend to look up to professional football players as role models and tend to follow everything they do. If we aim to improve the rate at which people recycle and make the planet a better place for us and future generations to live in, we will have to improve the way recycling is viewed in society and increase the number of people who do recycle and reuse products after they have finished with them.

Sometimes when people have finished using a product, and they can't find a bin or recycling collection point to leave it, they may be more likely to leave it on the street instead of keeping it with them until they find an appropriate place which they can leave it. Depending on the material which the product is made from, this affects the ammount of time it will take to downgrade and if this happens increasingly, over time this will lead to a large build up of different products in the environment which as well as leading to increasing the risk of global warming, can be a danger to many forms of wild life with different animals becoming trapped or having different items entangled in their feathers etc.

Most people will have never heard of the world's greenest football club. That's even though they play in the English Football League. From partnerships with airlines to kits that exploit foreign workers too many football clubs pay lip service to being green. That's according to Divert.co.uk spokesman Mark Hall.

"And we can see the worst offenders right now, as top clubs jet off for long-haul pre-season tours."

There's no argument as to who is the world's greenest football club – they even play in a green strip.

1. Forest Green Rovers -FGR play in England's League Two, and are based in Gloucestershire. They've only been in the league for a few seasons, but they've already made a big impact.

The world's first vegan football club, they're recognised by both the UN and FIFA as the greenest football team in the world.

Owner Dale Vince – he also owns environmentally friendly energy company Ecotricity – has introduced solar panels at the stadium, a fully organic pitch, and a vegan ethos that bans red meat products from the club.

Even their green-coloured strip is green, made from recycled plastics and coffee grounds. Hard to beat when it comes to green credentials, and a credit to English football.

OK, which club is in second place?

Being green isn't just for the small-fry. Even the monster Premier League clubs have made commitments to sustainability, and the results might surprise you. And it breaks this Arsenal-supporting press officer's heart to say that the next on the list is...

2. Tottenham Hotspur – A brand new stadium gave the Spurs the chance to start again, and greener. They've popped to the top of the Premier League sustainability chart with a slew of environmental policies that keeps them just ahead of...

3. Arsenal – The club processes its waste on site (fans say this happens on the pitch every match day), and has a space-age battery system that makes the most of green energy.

4. Brighton and Hove Albion – A relatively new out-of-town stadium, where the club is doing its best to use renewable power, locally-sourced refreshments, and slashing single-use plastics.

5. Athletic Bilbao – An unusual European club which literally only buys local, including their players - the Basque club only signs players native to the Basque region. As green credentials go, not signing players from the other side of the planet recalls a long-lost era of local teams for local people.

6. Manchester United– A club this large and this visible needs to be sustainable, and United not only works to improve its green credentials, they go out of their way to teach fans how to reduce waste and increase recycling.

Mark Hall: "Most clubs are now publishing their green policies as they realise that tens of thousands of fans descending on the stadium by car, drinking out of plastic cups, and eating meat-based snacks is very ungreen indeed.

There are many things that football clubs can do to improve their green credentials and help to save the planet. This includes stopping such things as:

Unnecessary travel- many clubs claim they are doing what they can to be as green as possible but then go and jet off to different training camps round the world which increase the ammount of carbon dioxide being pumped out in to the atmosphere. As this is a greenhouse gas it causes the Earth's temperature to rise significantly and the polar ice caps to mealt.

Dodgy sponsorship deals: Is your club sponsored by a long-haul airline? Does that airline use its sponsorship to greenwash their credentials? Not naming names, but – frankly – it's embarrassing.

Sweatshop replica kits: A decades-long blot on the sports industry. The XXXXXXL pie-eater size shirt you've bought from the club shop for somewhere north of sixty pounds was probably manufactured for a fraction of the cost in a cramped, dangerous factory by overworked labourers, some of school age. This needs to end.

Players with massive cars: How can your club claim to be green when the star striker turns up in a petrol-guzzling supercar? Be more like England star John Stones, who drives an old Mini to work. Clubs should insist players only appear on club premises if they arrive in a green vehicle.