Tottenham announces plan to reduce plastic usage at new stadium

Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium is designed to be the biggest and best in London, but like any public venue it also creates a lot of waste and probably has a pretty large carbon footprint. Today, the club announced that it is taking steps to be better environmental stewards by announcing a plan to phase out all single-use plastics inside the stadium, including eliminating plastic straws, cutlery, and plastic packaging on day one.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy said in a statement on Spurs’ website that this is being done to help reduce the amount of waste generated by the new stadium that will go into landfills.

“As a Club we have always taken our responsibility to care for our environment seriously. We have demonstrated this with the environmentally sensitive development of our Training Centre, where we have preserved historic hedgerows and planted for the future and which will see us adding an Environmental Centre and Nature Reserve there too. Another first by the Club.

“So I am delighted that we shall now be bringing our values to the new stadium to both play our part in the reduction of single-use plastics and raise awareness of the importance of doing so.”

This is pretty cool. The amount of plastic used in a typical match day is probably pretty staggering if you think about it. Not only plastic cups, straws and cutlery, but also the plastic used to wrap them, and all of them go into the landfill. Recycling can mitigate it, but a lot of plastic still goes into trash and eventually into landfills. Eliminating single-use plastic is a good thing.

The club didn’t go into detail as to what will replace the plastic, but there are options. Recyclable paper cups or reusable composites can be used instead of plastic, and there are now disposable cutlery that is made out of environmentally friendly materials that easily break down. There’s probably a lot of other options that I’m not thinking about.

The club also announced that One Hotspur members will receive a reusable see-through bag as part of their yearly membership package that fans are encouraged to use on match day to transport their belongings inside and out of the stadium. This will increase safety at the new ground and reduce the time of security sweeps as fans enter the stadium.

It’s not a new signing or a new contract, but it’s still pretty exceptional news and I welcome it.