Pink n Blue n Green

Nice day in Wonderful South London isn’t it? The sun is out, Champion Hill is buzzing, and Londoners are engaging in one of our favourite pastimes, complaining about the weather.

But large areas of Canada have gone up in smoke, India and China are both experiencing terrifying heatwaves and ancient European towns are now frequently swamped by flooding. It’s fair to say that the Climate Change is becoming Climate Emergency faster than most expected, and we here at Dulwich Hamlet need to play our part in dealing with this issue. So we started a Sustainabilty project and here’s a summary of where we’ve got to this year.

Where are we at?

As a football club with social justice at its heart, we recognise the significant and detrimental impact that climate breakdown is having on communities worldwide’.

To tackle the issue, DHST has established a sub- group focused on assessing and improving the environmental sustainability of the club.

The idea to review the club’s impact on the environment first started prior to the pandemic, but due to obvious circumstances it was put on hold until 2022. Ever since, an intrepid team of Supporters Trust Board Members, Club Board Members and interested fans have been meeting to work out how best to make our club environmentally sustainable and how to involve everyone at the club in that process. So we’ve been looking at understanding the level of support for activities in this space and how best to engage with our supporters, sponsors and local community to achieve the best results.

Areas we are assessing

Club operations - energy use, field maintenance, practice facilities, team travel, waste/recycling, water usage. Key partners - sponsors, food and beverage, community groups. Fan activities/behaviours - including game day activities and their every-day behaviours at home.

Agreed activities

We want to know what supporters think about climate change so we’ve made a survey we’d like you to complete. If you’re a Supporters’ Trust member and/or a season ticket holder you’ve probably already had an email inviting you to take part.That survey will help us to know what supporters understand about, and aspire to, when thinking about Environmental Sustainability and the role that DHFC could and should play.

We are conducting a baseline exercise which allows us to understand the enviromental impacts DHFC currently has. This ‘baseline’ will then be used to identify activities and behaviours around the club which we can alter to reduce our impact.

We will continue to keep you updated as we progress. And we’d encourage you to sign up to Pledgeball – an organisation that enables fan to complete environmentally positive activities that are then captured and scored.

Calls to action

Complete the survey if you have received it, otherwise you can go online and complete it at https://forms.gle/ jRvhxUt

If you are an expert in this space (or you have a passion to help DHFC be more sustainable and want to help) please email us at sustainability@dhst.org.uk.