WM-Air is working in partnership with the Birmingham County Football Association (BCFA) to better understand links between football activities, air quality and health and to support policy actions with regards to sustainable transport.
BCFA are part of the national FA’s regional network that governs, safeguards and aims to increase participation in football across all formats & abilities. Geographically BCFA cover Birmingham, The Black Country, Coventry, Warwickshire and into East Staffordshire. They have 7 professional clubs in the region but their main focus is on “grassroots football” with 1200 affiliated member clubs, 4750 teams and c.100,000 players.
They have recently developed a pioneering initiative to understand the environmental impact football is having, and implementing ways to help the game make fundamental changes to reduce its environmental footprint. The “Save Today, Play Tomorrow” project underpins their next 4 year strategy and launched on 8th June 2021.
BCFA approached WM-Air for support with the air quality aspect of this initiative – i.e. Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Particulate Matter (PM2.5) – in order to understand the current air quality situation around their club venues (figure above) and emissions associated with football related travel, to inform to specific actions concerning sustainable travel initiatives and to raise awareness of the health impacts associated with poor air quality and how this may affect player performance.
More information about the initiative, and the WM-Air report, can be found here >>
The report can be accessed here >>
BCFA have now progressed their football travel & transport work further by partnering with Liftshare to offer their members the opportunity to engage in car-sharing to/from football. Almost 1000 people have signed up to the programme that uses a digital app to validate journeys and provide data on emission savings as well as fuel costs. Furthermore, BCFA were successfully awarded £10,000 in Oct 21 by CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy) to complete further research on travel behaviours within football and to pilot schemes with 3 of the venues in Birmingham that were highlighted on the WM-Air study with poor air quality to promote more sustainable and active travel solutions.
In February 2022, BCFA hosted the first football & climate conference at St Georges Park with representatives from 5 of the regions professional clubs participating in discussion & debate on how football can play its part in tackling the climate crisis. The WM-Air study was used alongside work completed by the Italian FA & Life Tackle who were in attendance to validate mobility in football as the biggest challenge to resolve
Richard Lindsay, Business Insights Manager at BCFA, said: “When we initially set about creating our sustainability programme for football air quality was not something we had considered, however following the excellent work completed by WM-Air in detailing the venues in at risk areas and providing the evidence/data that supports this we have now focused heavily on travel & transport and trying to shift the behaviours of over c.125,000 people across the West Midlands involved in grassroots football to consider how the travel and finding alternative more sustainable solutions.
There is a lack of education in this space leading to a disconnect between the environment and football, however, to be ably assisted by the WM-Air team who quickly understood what our aims were and to provide us with something tangible like air quality studies at the beginning of our programme and then linking this to possible long-term health & wellbeing issues has given us great traction in engaging our audience to start considering making changes.”
WM-Air are now working on extending the air quality analysis for all national FAs (Jan 2024.)
‘Save Today, Play Tomorrow‘ Awards/Recognition:
County FA Recognition Award – Birmingham County FA: https://www.birminghamfa.com/news/2022/aug/18/county-fa-recognition-award
BBC Green Sport Awards: Teamwork Award: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/62659432
2021 Sports Business Awards in the Sustainability in Sport Award category: https://www.birminghamfa.com/news/2021/oct/01/award-finals-shortlist
Winner of Strategy – Organisation Award at the British Association for Sustainable Sport awards 2022: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/richard-lindsay-5598761b_basisawards2022-activity-6993506716755578881-tAGh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner and Awards 2023: Winner of excellence in Sustainability: https://twitter.com/BirminghamFA/status/1636770620783620097