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Green agenda helps Forest Green punch above its weight

Forest Green Rovers represents a town (Nailsworth) with a population of 5,000, the smallest place to host an English professional league team. Yet its green agenda helped it to make £5m in revenues in 2017/18, well above the League Two average of £3.8m.

The team plays on an organic pitch in a stadium powered by renewable energy. Its owner Dale Vince is the founder of green energy company Ecotricity. Fans eat from an all vegan menu. Scottish seaweed is used on the pitch rather than fertilisers and it is cut with a solar powered electric lawnmower. It is the first football club certified by the United Nations as carbon neutral.

The club makes nearly half of its yearly revenues from sponsorship from companies like vegan food makers Quorn and Grundon, a waste management and recycling group. The club's latest sponsor is Candriam, a Luxembourg-based investment company with well over $100 bn in assets under its management, focused on sustainable investment.

The club is hoping to receive planning permission for a new 5,000-seater stadium built entirely from timber which is seen as the most sustainable material.

Forest Green Rovers have created a unique selling point. Whether other clubs can occupy this niche is more questionable, although Mr Vince is advising the EFL on sustainability plans for clubs.

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