Liverpool director explains sustainability approach which does mean more as ‘most successful club in England’ | OneFootball

In an era when football clubs increasingly speak the language of purpose as fluently as they do tactics, Liverpool have positioned themselves at the forefront of the game’s sustainability movement. Not through grandstanding, but through something more methodical: a long-term, evolving framework known as The Red Way.

For Rishi Jain, the club’s director of impact, the starting point is not a policy document or a carbon report, but history.

“Being the most successful club in England and one of the biggest football clubs in the world gives us a huge platform,” he explains. “That history gives us an opportunity to drive positive change across the three pillars of The Red Way: people, planet and communities.”

It is a familiar argument in modern football – that success brings responsibility. But at Liverpool it is framed less as obligation and more as opportunity. The club’s global reach, cultivated across decades of domestic dominance and glorious European nights, becomes a vehicle for something broader than results.

Yet Jain is careful to stress that visibility alone is not enough. “If we’re delivering content, it has to be meaningful, but also engaging,” he says. “And when we talk about tougher issues – whether that’s equality, diversity and inclusion or emissions reduction – it has to be authentic and genuine.”

That insistence on authenticity runs through The Red Way, now in its fifth year. Built around a series of measurable targets across its three pillars, the programme’s stated aim is disarmingly simple: to “build a better future” for people, planet and communities. But simplicity, in this case, belies complexity.

“It’s a holistic programme,” Jain says. “It brings together diversity and inclusion, environmental work, community engagement and collaboration with our commercial partners. Ultimately, the goal is – as cheesy as it might sound – to leave the world in a better place.”

Clubs have long spoken about legacy in abstract terms. The Red Way attempts to operationalise it. Crucially, it does so in public. From the outset, Liverpool laid out their targets and invited scrutiny.

“That transparency has led to fantastic conversations,” Jain explains. “It’s also driven better work as we continue to push our progress.”

Progress, in this context, is deliberately framed as unfinished. The Red Way is not a campaign with an end date, but a moving set of goalposts.

“Will it ever be complete? No,” Jain says. “We’re constantly expanding what we do. When we reach a target, we set another – usually slightly higher.”

He points to the club’s foundation work as an example. An initial target to engage 150,000 young people has already been surpassed in ambition, with a new goal of reaching 500,000 by 2030. The logic is simple: success should breed further ambition, not complacency.

If that sounds abstract, some of the programme’s outcomes are anything but. At Anfield, behavioural change has become a measurable reality.

“Our plastic bottle recycling rates have gone from under 25 per cent to around 96 per cent per game,” Jain says. “That’s been the result of a three- to four-year campaign involving education, engagement and messaging.”

Perhaps more tellingly, those behaviours have proven durable. When the club scaled back its messaging, the habits remained.

“That shows we approached it in the right way,” he adds.

It is a small but significant insight into how football can influence behaviour – not through one-off campaigns, but through repetition, normalisation and collective identity. When 50,000 people do something together, it stops feeling like an intervention and starts feeling like culture.

Liverpool have also leaned into storytelling as a means of engagement. A recent campaign, delivered in partnership with AXA, drew parallels between marine ecosystems and football systems, using the language of resilience to connect environmental issues with the rhythms of the game.

“It was a really engaging way to tell a story,” Jain says. “And it helped people understand environmental health in a football context.”

This translation – of complex global issues into football’s emotional vernacular – is where clubs arguably hold their greatest power. But it is also where they risk overreach, particularly when it comes to player involvement.

“The last thing we want is to put players in a position where they’re making promises that aren’t genuine,” Jain says. “That wouldn’t be fair on them.”

Instead, Liverpool’s approach has been to work with players who have a natural affinity for the issues at hand. Yana Daniels, during her time at the club, became a figurehead for sustainable merchandise initiatives, an involvement rooted in personal conviction rather than corporate necessity.

“We empowered her to grow that work,” Jain says. “And even now, we still stock her products and maintain that relationship.”

It is a model that prioritises credibility over visibility. Players are not positioned as experts, but as amplifiers.

“If we can use their platform, their face and their voice to enhance what we do, then we will,” Jain explains. “But they don’t need to be the champions of it.”

That distinction matters in an era when athletes are increasingly expected to speak on issues far beyond their professional remit. By lowering the barrier to entry, Liverpool hope to bring more players into the conversation, particularly around environmental topics, where engagement has historically lagged behind social issues.

For Jain, this intersection between social justice and environmental sustainability is where the most meaningful work happens.

“I’m really passionate about having those conversations side by side,” he says. “If you can talk about diversity and the planet together, you start to reach different audiences.”

It is also where football’s broader potential comes into focus. The sport’s ubiquity, its ability to dominate headlines and capture attention across demographics, makes it a uniquely effective conduit for cultural change.

“Football is everywhere,” Jain says. “That gives us a real opportunity to talk about important societal topics.”

But he is careful to frame that opportunity in modest terms. Football can influence, he argues, but it cannot dictate.

“It’s about bringing people on a journey,” he says. “If clubs are honest and say, ‘We’re on this journey – come with us,’ that’s when people start to take responsibility themselves.”

That journey, for Liverpool, is now entering a new phase. Having driven behavioural change within the stadium, the challenge is to extend it beyond matchday.

“What we’d love to do now is influence behaviours at home,” Jain says. “But there’s a balance. We don’t want to dictate or contradict ourselves.”

The contradiction he refers to is inherent to modern football. Growth (larger stadiums, bigger crowds, global tours) inevitably carries an environmental cost.

“We’re not hiding from that,” Jain says. “We want to be commercially strong, but at the same time we want to minimise our impact.”

It is an acknowledgement that cuts against the grain of polished sustainability messaging. There are no easy wins here, no clean narratives. Just trade-offs, transparency and incremental progress.

In that sense, The Red Way is less a solution than a framework for asking better questions – about what football is, what it represents and what it owes to the world beyond the pitch.

Or, as Jain puts it: “If we can encourage people to take small actions, that can collectively make a big difference.”