Forest Green Supporters’ Club Become Carbon Neutral 

Forest Green Rovers Supporters’ Club (FGRSC) has become Carbon Neutral with immediate effect, this will cover the entire 2021/22 season. We are possibly the first Supporters’ Club to do so in the football league.

FGRSC has a proud association with Forest Green Rovers Football Club (FGRFC) dating back over 75 years; in that time there have been many developments on and off the pitch. One of the most recent changes at the club has been FGRFCs leadership in environmental sustainability in sport, becoming recognised by the UN and FIFA for its green credentials.

The Supporters’ Club has decided to become Carbon Neutral, following the lead of FGRFC, but also representing the growing number of our membership who see this as important.

Reducing our footprint 

First off, the Supporters’ Club has tried to reduce its carbon footprint. This has been done in many ways including:

  • organising and promoting use of the Supporters’ Club Coach resulting in a reduced number of car journeys to away fixtures
  • using a host for our website which already offsets emissions from its data centres and hosting
  • holding meetings in a location convenient to board members and which is already in use, so creating less net new energy use and emissions

Assessing our footprint 

After reducing our footprint where it was possible, FGRSC has assessed our carbon footprint. We are fortunate that much of our emissions of CO2 are already offset:

  • Coach travel is already offset by the football club
  • Our chosen website host already offsets our web pages

Therefore, the remaining activities to offset included:

  • Supporters’ Club emails (newsletters, Supporters’ Club board communications etc)
  • Social media posts
  • Supporters’ Club Board Members travel to and from meetings
  • Other events such as the FGRSC Quiz

For this some assumptions were made using recognised data from online resources. Allowance has also been made in our assessment for any additional ad-hoc activities which may occur during the season.

Offsetting the balance 

After assessing our footprint, the Supporters’ Club have offset the remaining CO2 emissions using the UN’s Carbon Offsetting Scheme. The cost of this was minimal to the Supporters’ Club and we feel represents good value to align ourselves more closely to FGRFC.

A forward-looking Supporters’ Club 

We hope that the move to become Carbon Neutral is reflective of our desire to be a forward-thinking Supporters’ Club and that it aligns to other recent activities we have undertaken to improve our offering to Supporters which includes in recent years;

  • Providing investment towards the Gym Bar
  • Contributing towards increasing the capacity of food counters around The New Lawn
  • Providing financial support to the Women’s football team
  • Sponsoring the Academy minibuses
  • Investing in a new FGRSC website and increasing our membership communications