Sport Positive Leagues: Premier League Clubs 2023
Access the Environmental Sustainability Report here.
*We highly recommend you bookmark this page, rather than download the PDF, as we are likely to update it periodically.*
Our ‘Premier League Clubs Environmental Sustainability Report’ maps efforts from all 20 Premier League clubs across thirteen categories of activity. From operational areas such as energy, transport, waste, water, single use plastic, food and biodiversity, to strategic areas including commitments, policy and reporting, communications, education, procurement and sponsorship.
Sport Positive Leagues has previously released this information in a league table format, with points attributed to levels of activity. For the fifth year, it was decided to release the information as a deep-dive, searchable report to disseminate and amplify the clubs activities as a cohort, share trends and encourage access to key information.
Read the report now. We highly recommend you bookmark this page, rather than download the PDF, as we are likely to update it periodically
A note from our Founder, Claire Poole
Six years ago, mainly because I wanted to know the answer to this question myself, I began chatting to Premier League football clubs and finding out from them directly what they were doing on environmental sustainability. At that time clubs didn’t have sustainability pages on their website, and there was limited information in the public domain, so I had to go direct.
Six years isn’t that long ago in real terms, but in sustainability in football, it was a different era. As I collated this information, I considered how to publicise it in a central place, to raise attention and awareness of these efforts and encourage more action. The idea came about to allocate points and create an off-the-pitch league table, a format that football fans were familiar with. Sport Positive Leagues was born.
Five years later, and having done multiple Sport Positive Leagues matrices for Premier League, EFL, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and supporting other sports with their efforts, things have changed. Clubs are now much more frequently engaging on this topic, 16 Premier League clubs now have a sustainability page on their website for fans to access this information directly, 6 clubs have net zero carbon targets, and first team players more regularly appear in club videos recycling, driving electric vehicles and eating plant based food.
We are always taking stock and evaluating our output and benefits to the community and the global sports and climate movement. This work has always been about disseminating and amplifying club activities to inspire others, and to create a one stop shop for those who want to know what clubs are doing in this space. Things have moved on a lot (a LOT!) since 2019. So for the fifth year of doing this work, we’ve decided to take out the league table element this year, and share this searchable report instead.
You can use it to search what one club is doing across all categories of activity or you can see what all clubs are doing within one category. We hope it provides a definitive guide (as of April 2024) that enables you to learn what clubs are doing in an easy and searchable way.
We plan to further evolve this effort going forward, to keep supporting football, and all sports, globally to access important information on their path to increased action on climate and environmental sustainability. As well as to use levers to encourage action. We welcome your thoughts on how helpful this is to you, versus the way we’ve been doing things previously. That’s for another time. For now, I hope this is a helpful tool for you on your journey.
Happy reading,
Claire Poole
Founder, Sport Positive
**Please note that the intellectual property of Sport Positive Leagues, in terms of the concept, report, categories and points system, are owned wholly by Sport Positive Ltd. You must also explicit permission to share, republish, reference or otherwise distribute our league table or report information.*
