Plymouth Argyle’s players still haven’t returned home after their FA Cup slips against Manchester City on Saturday. The club’s obligation to make environmentally conscious travel choices means they travel further to play Hull on Tuesday night.
Football -related travel generates 56.7 tonnes of CO2E per day. Season for Premier League clubs alone, with 85 percent of emissions attributed to flight. Plymouth is one of 14 clubs that have signed up for a new charter that commits to greener behavior.
“It feels big,” says Katie Cross, CEO of Pantball Sky Sports. “We first launched this in 2023 with only six clubs, and the goal was to reduce the number of domestic matches that happened in English football. We needed it to be an elementary school.”
Cross adds: “Having 14 clubs now, including a large number of championship clubs, very happy to sign the charter is a real reflection on the meaning given to sustainability, and especially from individuals in these clubs.
“These are people who have personal appetite to really run sustainability. Football business is very difficult. It doesn’t prioritize sustainability, it doesn’t really allow it. So if you want to run it, it generally has to come from a personal place.”
Plymouth, under President Simon Hallett, was probably probably at the forefront of this initiative. Cross describes them as “a fantastic club with regard to culture” with an income model that is very different from the norm – not every decision is a commercial.
“It’s been a bit of a journey for us in the last few years,” Christian Kent tells Sky Sports. Kent is Plymouth’s head of conferences and events. “I am very proud of the progress we have made, we have largely halved our emissions in two years.”
He explains: “We do things like solar panels and rainwater harvesting, but then there are the little touches. We’ve gone digital with tickets. We use electric vehicles. Small steps can make a big change. We’re working toward Net Zero.
“If you look at a sport like Formula One that are the biggest polluters in terms of the sporting world, they have made a big statement of being nail zero in 2030. So if a sport like Formula One can do it, there is no reason why football can’t be the same.”
Why does Plymouth take the lead on this? “Obviously, it’s really important for us to play in green,” Kent is joking. But it’s about creating a culture, one that comes from the top of the organization, from Hallett, CEO Andrew Parkinson and the rest.
“You need it from the board right down to each employee. The whole team must meet. Everyone here plays their role and live these values. We want to be sustainable not only financially but in the environmental sense.”
Joe Edwards, Plymouth’s captain, is among those who have embraced the club’s values. Now 34, he joined six years ago from Walsall. He knows the location makes travel a hot topic. “It’s a challenge, but that’s what makes it so special,” he argues.
“This is a unique club and it is great to be involved in something like this. It comes from the top, but it feeds through to us as players. We know we are affecting the carbon imprint so we will take responsibility for it and also play our role.”
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Logistics means Plymouth takes airplanes, but they limit the number and try to be creative. “We don’t have to fly to each game,” Edwards says. Therefore, the decision to stay north of furniture decides, a serious commitment from the club, considering the hotel’s costs.
How do players feel about being gone for so long? “It varies. Those with kids miss them sometimes. Sometimes it’s pretty nice to have a break!” Edwards have twin boys, five, and it has only sharpened the mind when it comes to the environment.
“They are taught about it in school, which is great, I think. They come back with little things. When you have a young family growing up, you will have the safest and the cleanest environment for them too. It has really highlighted the problem to me.
“When you sign here, you sign to know the location. You sign up for it. I have often enjoyed the logistics of coming to places because you have a lot of time together as a team. But I imagine it is completely different at a Premier League club.”
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Cross understands it better than most. She is reluctant to call individual clubs, but has heard the stories of flights for staggering short trips. “It’s an absolute bisarr situation and many fans call it out because it’s such a visible thing,” she explains.
“One could say that it is a small percentage of their total emissions. But the normalization of this behavior is not measurable. It strengthens this sense of paralysis and the kind of despair that people have because they feel no action can be taken.
“We know from research that over 80 percent of fans are concerned about climate change. They want their clubs to take more action, but they are silent and they are not aware of others’ concern. They are worried that they will be laughed at to raise it.
“Players who step up would have a huge impact. There is restraint from them because of course they are part of this system, not necessarily through elections. Many of them will not fly, but they are worried that they will be called to be hypocrites.
“William Troost-Kong, the Nigeria captain, is very honest that he has no choice. He is within this carbon-intensive system, but he does what he can and the same should be the case for all of us. It doesn’t mean you just give up and just don’t do anything.
“We don’t need everyone to be perfect. What we really don’t need is a few to be perfect, and the others who are also worried about being perfect, they don’t take anything. It’s about all of us who really do what we can in the role we see it as.
“Whether it makes sustainable choices in our own behavior, talking to family and friends about it, talking to our club, talking to our businesses, voting with our feet when it comes to consumerism, people don’t realize how much of an influence we can have.”
The hope is that this charter can inspire meaningful change. Cross and Pantball have experienced “very little pushback” from clubs in the Football League, but there is an appreciation that Premier League’s wealth leads to different pressure.
Cutting the flights would mean giving a competitive advantage to their rivals. But if the Football League clubs had to commit, a marine change could bring in mind. “We need that group press, right?” Supporters would start demanding better.
“Very quickly it could be the new norm. Think of what happened to the smoking ban. It is definitely bisarr now to think that we are sitting on a pub and people would smoke around us. But that’s what used to happen. We accept the norm very, very easily.
“And here’s the norm that clubs essentially choose to damage the air that we breathe quite significantly when it is absolutely not necessary to do so.” With clubs like Plymouth at the forefront, the ambition is to show that there is another way.