Football needs to move beyond the theatre of sustainability and control supply chains | OneFootball

Elite football loves to talk about sustainability. Clubs launch glossy strategies, unveil recycled kits, announce solar power installations and pledge to cut emissions. But beneath the press releases lies a more complex truth: football’s environmental and ethical footprint extends far beyond matchdays.

The supply chain – the vast web of manufacturing, logistics and labour that produces everything from kits and boots to burgers and stadium seats – remains one of the sport’s least examined battlegrounds. And for all the rhetoric, football is only beginning to grapple with the scale of the challenge.

The most visible part of this system is the football kit. Adidas, Nike and Puma have all introduced recycled polyester ranges, with marketing centred on bottles that would otherwise end up in landfills. The technology is real and the progress significant: Adidas, for instance, have reported that the majority of their football shirts now use recycled materials. But researchers have repeatedly pointed out that recycled polyester still sheds microplastics when washed, contributing to water pollution. Recycled does not equal low-impact and it certainly does not equal circular.

There are also questions clubs rarely address. Where is the recycled polyester sourced? What energy mix powers the manufacturing plants? How far do the materials travel before reaching the stadium shop?

Publicly available supply-chain disclosures from major sportswear companies confirm manufacturing hubs in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, China and Indonesia. These regions have diverse labour-rights conditions and varying environmental regulations. Kits may be ‘sustainable’ in material composition but still embedded in carbon-heavy systems.

Matchday catering is another often-ignored contributor. Football feeds millions of people each season, and many clubs rely heavily on industrial suppliers who transport goods long distances before matchday. The carbon footprint of food production – especially meat – is significant.

Several clubs have attempted to address this. Tottenham Hotspur introduced ‘low-carbon’ menu options developed with the Carbon Trust. Forest Green Rovers famously went fully vegan years ago. But across Europe’s major leagues, the majority of stadium catering still relies on high-impact supply chains.

The environmental cost of maintaining a football pitch is also more complex than the public might imagine. Grass needs water, fertiliser and specialised lighting rigs to grow through winter. Clubs like Manchester City and Real Madrid have introduced water-recycling systems and hybrid grass technology to reduce inputs.

Yet even hybrid pitches use plastic fibres, and many groundskeepers still rely on synthetic fertilisers that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. Innovations exist – such as organic fertilisers, electric mowers and smarter irrigation – but adoption varies widely.

Then there is stadium construction and renovation, one of football’s biggest environmental blind spots.

The embodied carbon in concrete and steel is enormous; multiple academic studies have identified construction as a leading emissions source in global sport infrastructure. New builds such as Tottenham’s stadium and Everton’s Bramley-Moore Dock project have emphasised energy efficiency and long-term sustainability, but the construction materials themselves carry vast climate costs.

Timber-based stadium design, already used in smaller projects across Scandinavia, offers a lower-carbon alternative, but scaling that approach to 60,000-seat arenas is far from straightforward.

Football’s supply-chain scrutiny has improved in recent years, partly because of pressure from fans and NGOs. The Clean Clothes Campaign and Human Rights Watch have long pushed for transparency in global sportswear manufacturing. Some clubs now publish sustainability reports that include supply-chain information, though the detail varies. UEFA introduced environmental criteria into its club licensing system in 2022, but the requirements focus largely on governance rather than granular supply-chain auditing.

One of the sport’s biggest challenges is that clubs often outsource the majority of their sustainability footprint to partners. A club can claim it uses ‘sustainable kits’, but the environmental responsibility rests mostly with Nike or Adidas.

Similarly, catering is outsourced to contractors, stadium construction to external firms and merchandising to wholesalers. Clubs can influence their partners, but they do not control them. Without firmer regulation or industry-wide standards, progress depends on how far each club are willing to push their suppliers.

There are, however, promising signs. Several Premier League clubs are now pursuing ISO 14001 certification, an internationally recognised environmental-management standard. Germany’s Bundesliga has introduced mandatory sustainability criteria for all clubs, making it the first major league to embed environmental governance into licensing rules. These steps do not directly clean up the supply chain, but they do force clubs to take a systems-level approach rather than rely solely on symbolic initiatives.

The next frontier will require football to move beyond the theatre of sustainability and confront the material reality of how the sport is built. That means disclosing supply-chain data, choosing partners based on environmental performance, integrating circular-economy thinking into kit design and embracing science-based targets rather than marketing slogans. It means understanding that a club’s sustainability score is not determined by the colour of their matchday recycle bins but by the carbon footprint of their entire operational ecosystem.

Football has never been short on grand visions or sweeping ambitions. The challenge now is to apply that same imagination to the parts of the sport few fans ever see. The supply chain may not be glamorous, but it is where football’s environmental future will be won or lost.