The English football world is not known for being environmentally friendly. Players race around in gas-guzzling sports cars, clubs make short flights to away games and around games the throw-away society can be seen in all its glory. Forest Green Rovers, the greenest club in the world that is on the rise in English football, proves that things can be done differently. The man behind this green and sporting success is Dale Vince (1961), an old hippie who wants to make football as green as an unsprayed lawn.
Unsurprisingly, the United Nations has named Forest Green Rovers the world’s first carbon neutral club. The menu is vegan, the field is organic and the signs along the sidelines promote eco-products. The green-black shirts that the players wear are made from recycled plastic and coffee residues. Recently, the team has been driving an electric bus to away games. And within a few years, its home base will be a wooden stadium designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.
Greening Forest Green Rovers
The greening of the 133-year-old club started in 2010, when Vince became a major shareholder. That his eye had fallen on a club from the 5,794 soulful village of Nailsworth in the West English county of Gloucestershire was not unexpected. It is near Stroud, the spiritual heart of the British climate movement and also the birthplace of Extinction Rebellion. Not far away is Glastonbury, site of the famous spring festival that has its roots in the hippie movement of the early 1970s.
It was at Glastonbury where Vince made his first pounds as an eco-industrialist through there wind phones wind-powered charging stations for mobile phones. In the early 1990s, Vince, a ‘New Age traveler’ who had dropped out of high school at the age of fifteen, decided to build his own windmills. The son of a truck driver had educated himself in aerodynamics and windmill technology, as well as applying for building permits and project financing.
In 1995 Vince founded the Renewable Energy Company (now called Ecotricity) and after a year the first windmills started running. A quarter of a century later, the turnover of the energy company amounts to more than 300 million euros. It also supplies solar energy, and since 2010 it has been importing environmentally friendly gas that is processed in the Netherlands by fermenting sugar beet residues. In 2004 Vince was awarded a royal decoration: Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
Eco-consciousness top football players
Vince donates money to both the Greens and the Labor Party, but he put most of the money into the ailing Forest Green Rovers. “Bankruptcy threatened,” he said in an interview in The Guardian“That would have been wrong because it’s part of the local community. I was invited to attend a match. It was great, it was like a small theater, intense and personal.’ The only thing the prospective owner disliked was the eating habits: all those burgers, all that meat, all those dead animals.
Convincing the players was easier than expected. The fact that a vegetarian or vegan diet contributes to health and thus sporting performance facilitated the conversion. Top players like Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero don’t eat meat during the football season. The greening under Vince attracted the attention of eco-conscious top football players. Former Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin, a vegan since 2017, is the second largest shareholder in Forest Green Rovers after Vince.
Vince is not the kind of owner who throws money around. The £25k he paid to Bury FC for Adrian Randall long before the green revolution is still a record. Like Premier League club Brentford and the Danish FC Midtjylland, Forest Green Rovers uses the Moneyball principle. Players – in particular non-transferable players and mercenaries – are recruited on the basis of statistics. In addition to being climate neutral, The Rovers, also known as The Vegans and The Greens, are transfer neutral.
On to the Premier League
Earlier this month, Vince announced his intention to sell Ecotricity. He wants more time for his other businesses, such as The Devil’s Kitchen, which supplies vegan meals to schools. The 59-year-old is also said to have plans to enter politics. According to Vince, despite the big promises, the government is making too little progress on the environment. Climate is not the only theme in which Vince feels involved. He regularly points to the plight of the Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel.
However, he gets the most publicity for his football activities, especially after Forest Green Rovers were promoted to League One last week, the third tier of the English competition. In a week, if the club wins in Mansfield, the club can also become champion. The ultimate goal is the Premier League. Vince is already unintentionally causing commotion at that top level. At recent matches in London and Newcastle, climate activists from Just Stop Oil tied themselves to the goals. Vince turned out to be one of the donors of this action group.
3 X DALE VINCE
Battle of the Beanfield
Vince was involved in the famous Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge in 1985, where 1,300 police officers tried to prevent 600 New Age Travelers from organizing a peace festival at the famous Early Stone Age monument.
Vincent vs. musk
In 2015, Dale Vince and Elon Musk fought a legal battle after Tesla canceled a partnership with Ecotricity to install charging points along British motorways. In the end, the two reached a compromise outside the courtroom.
partner alimony
It wasn’t the only lawsuit Vince got involved in. Twenty years after their divorce, his ex had demanded 2.25 million euros in spousal alimony. In the end she received 355 thousand euros, of which little was left after paying the lawyers.