My Three Things for Climate Change
by Damon Fox, Business Development Manager at Northampton Town F.C. Community Trust.
As the sustainability lead at Northampton Town F.C Community Trust I have begun to take Climate Action even more seriously. Over the last two years I have been the advocate for engaging our fans, school children and families in Planet League, a Climate Action Football Competition created to inspire action and change through football fans competing against other football fans. Our success has led to making changes across the club and to a monthly meeting between both the Community Trust and Club on ways and programmes we can be part of, to support this important area.
- Travel - Following a recent Planet League campaign and not using my vehicle as one of the actions to score, I began walking the 5km from home to my office at the stadium and back again in the evenings. This began last October and I have continued to do this ever since. I now enjoy my walks listening to podcasts and sometimes taking time to plan work things for the day in my head. I enjoy the fresh air as well as the physical benefits I am getting from it. Strengthening my legs has helped me over a knee injury and with completing running challenges. I feel really good about making this choice.
- Food - Again having been inspired by the challenge of the competition we had 6 weeks and then another 3 weeks without meat for meals and myself and my wife certainly enjoyed it. We found new things to cook and new ways to be creative with our cooking whilst at the same time often saving in the pocket too. I am not a vegetarian or a vegan but having a significant reduction in meat has made us feel positive about what we can do. Often as well most of these meat substitutes come in recyclable packaging.
- Packaging - Another area we have looked at in our household is the amount of recycling we were doing, we are positive with recycling but actually wanted to see if we can reduce the amount of packaging we buy in the first place. We have now started shopping for vegetables and fruit at local markets where they come without plastic or netting. Another area we have done this across the house is the bathrooms where we now only use bars of soap, again to reduce on the plastic bought, and then recycled as well recyclable toilet paper. In these cases it is not always about the cost saving but you can certainly gain those benefits in the long run. (no pun intended)
Planet League
Planet League
