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Corporate Sustainability
“As General Secretary of the FA Group, it is my personal ambition for us to deliver our objectives in a responsible and sustainable way. Now that we are all based at Wembley Stadium we must build on the good work that has taken place since the stadium opened and ensure that environmental concerns are at the forefront of our thinking. In short, ‘Going Green’ is good for our business. Since 2007 we have embraced environmental sustainability as a positive challenge and a core business objective. I have been working closely with the Wembley Senior Management Team to formalise our approach by implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS) at the stadium, which is now of course the FA Group Headquarters. Our longer-term goal is to extend our focus from Wembley Stadium to all FA operations, and beyond.”
Our sustainable business approach includes managing the environmental impacts of five priority areas within Wembley Stadium: 1. Energy 2. Waste 3. Water 4. Transport 5. Procurement/Supply chain
In each area, our Green Team, comprised of senior management and key stakeholders, established baseline data to understand our current impacts and to provide a benchmark against which performance can be measured. This has allowed us to prioritise our actions and set appropriate targets. The Stadium actively engages its staff, supply chain, clients and other stakeholders in its sustainability programme, although the priority has been to first get our own house in order before communicating externally.
The generation of energy (gas and electricity) directly contributes to climate change. Extracting and burning fossil fuels generates carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (Co2e) that lead to ‘global warming’, otherwise known as climate change. Wembley Stadium faces the challenge of being a large venue with correspondingly high energy demands. Despite this, we have reduced energy consumption by 28% to date and we purchase 100% of our electricity from the supplier’s green tariff.
Waste treatment and disposal produces significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, notably methane, which contribute significantly to global climate change. Waste is therefore a key sustainability issue for a venue the size of Wembley Stadium. Thanks to our ‘waste recycling and recovery programme’, Wembley Stadium is now a ‘zero waste to landfill’ venue. This means that all waste in the stadium is now recycled (made into new products) or recovered (converted into electricity that is returned to the national grid). We are currently achieving a recycling rate of approximately 76%; our long-term target is to achieve an 80% recycling rate.
At Wembley, our main water challenge is the consumption of potable (drinking) water: we store and process 600,000 litres of water on site. The stadium’s water consumption is, unsurprisingly, greatest on event days when up to 90,000 people use our facilities. On non-event days, maintenance activities such as cleaning, jet-washing and watering the pitch consume a significant amount of non-potable water. The Green Team continue to trial a number of water-saving initiatives around the Stadium.
Although Wembley Stadium is a public transport destination that benefits from a substantial investment programme in local infrastructure, there is still much we can do. Vehicular travel is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change. By promoting alternatives we hope to create a healthier, happier workforce and better environment. Our Green Travel Plan aims to reduce the number of people travelling to the stadium by car and encourage alternative means of travel which have less environmental impact.
An organisation’s approach to procurement contracts and relationships can have profound impacts on the environmental sustainability of its entire supply chain. As part of a ‘green procurement programme’ we continue to work with partners and suppliers to ensure that sustainability is a consideration from the supplier pre-qualification stage and to establish where we can make improvements to environmental sustainability performance across procurement activities.