Udinese Calcio is a football club in Serie A (the main football league in Italy) which has won in 2023 the so-called „Championship of Sustainability”, an award given to the football team which takes more care about environmental policies. Its strategy foresees partnership with an energy provider specialized in Zero Emissions, which is providing the energy supply to their stadium, production of kits from recycled materials and more.
Objectives:
- To have a Zero emission football stadium completely based on renewable energies
- To compensate carbon emissions that cannot be reduced through support of other projects
- To promote environmentally sustainable solutions for professional football
- To support environmental education for football fans
Description:
Udinese calcio is the first club in Italy (4th in Europe) in terms of environmentally sustainable solutions, an award which has been recognized to them in 2023 and that today they are still carrying.
The award is generated by a number of different initiatives that are part of the strategy of the club, lead in the last 30 years by the Pozzo family, and that is largely merit of their partnership with the sponsor BlueEnergy (which also gives the current name to their stadium in the italian city of Udine) specialized in zero-emissions energy solutions.
The initiatives include:
- A stadium which is completely carbon-neutral as its energy provision is 100% based on renewable sources
- The use of CarbonSink to compensate any gas emissions that are otherwise impossible to reduce to 0 through support of other projects
- A players’ kit made from Macron completely made by recycled materials (plastic bottles)
- The possibility for football fans that subscribe to a furniture of BlueEnergy electricity to pay for their year’s subscription to the team in 12 instalments directly in their energy bill
- A request for high standards of environmental sustainability from all its partners and service providers
Impact and Results:
The action of Udinese calcio inspires many other football clubs and not only, and their fans in primis, involving them in direct actions and motivating them to use sustainable energy solutions, but in general providing educational tools about environmentally sustainable solutions.
As direct results, some examples:
- In the period 2019-2022 a total of 2.250 tons of CO2 were saved thanks to the partnership with the energy furniture of BlueEnergy
- In 2020 around 344.580 plastic bottles were recycled to produce the football kits of the team
Conclusions and Suggestions for Youth Workers:
The example of Udinese is showing that even big companies can make different efforts in order to make their actions more sustainable and they need to take steps in that direction.
Similar thoughts can be applied to other structures (i.e. youth centers, schools, houses, youth clubs, etc.) and organizations, and young people can be involved in co-designing such solutions.
All of them, with an effort and enough strategies, are possible.
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