Chris Boardman

SPORT MUST GO GREEN

Sport England chair, Chris Boardman, has called on the sports and physical activity sector to be “on the right side of history” when it comes to sustainability. Speaking at the SAPCA Annual Conference, Boardman also recognised the importance of 3G pitches, but that there remain issues around recycling and the containment of microplastics

Chris Boardman has called for the sports and physical activity sector to “take action we can be proud of” on environmental sustainability. The Sport England chair made the call during the SAPCA Annual Conference in Manchester on 27 February. Boardman was one of the keynote speakers at the conference, held at Emirates Old Trafford. “All of us here have a vital role in making our sector sustainable,” he told the 200 delegates at the event.

“We know it’s not an easy task, and sadly 2025 has seen our headwinds strengthen. This year brings a raft of new reports and research highlighting the growing threat, and of course sport is being impacted along with everyone else.”

Strategic moves

In his speech, Boardman offered his insights into Sport England’s future direction of travel and the organisation’s Every Move sustainability strategy, which was launched in May 2024. He also outlined the challenges posed to sport by climate change.

“Sport England’s mission is to get more people active and we can’t do that if pitches are unusable, or you can’t reach them because of flooding or it’s too hot to hold events,” he said. “So this is personal for us and to our stakeholders for very pragmatic reasons.

“People who are active are much more likely to be happy and healthy. And healthy people are what the health care system desperately needs. Active people already relieve some of the NHS burden, preventing 1.3 million cases of depression, 600,000 of diabetes and 57,000 of the UK’s leading cause of death – dementia – saving billions a year.

“We can also be the link here. Which is what led Sport England to publish our first-ever environmental sustainability strategy, Every Move, last year. In developing the strategy, we talked to the sector – many of you – and participants. “We found three in five adults had at some point been prevented from taking part in a sport or being active by extreme weather. Meanwhile, four in 10 sports organisations had experienced weather-related disruptions to their activities. “The FA alone estimated that 120,000 football matches are being lost annually due to adverse weather conditions. That’s the equivalent of seven million minutes of community football lost in one year alone.”

Let’s harness our commitment to innovation in the service of something even bigger

Putting words into action

Boardman acknowledged that launching a strategy “wasn’t difficult”, but that delivering one was. That in mind, he said Sport England has already embarked on a number of actions to ensure the strategy will have a real-life impact. These actions have included the organisation reviewing its own practices and operations.

“We own three big national sports centres: Bisham Abbey, Lilleshall and Plas Y Brenin in Wales,” he said.

“We are working alongside their operators to insulate buildings and invest in new heating technologies, to make them energy efficient and ultimately, sustainable. We are being deliberate about the equipment and food we buy, favouring sustainable suppliers, and we are actively increasing our understanding of biodiversity to maximise our ‘ecosystem service’, such as creating places to hold excess rainfall.”

He also mentioned how the government was in the middle of investing £80 million to improve the energy efficiency of public leisure facilities with pools – which have, historically, been notorious for their high energy use. The actions being enabled by the investments range from solar power installations to the fitting of air handling units.

“Each and every one of the 570 interventions enabled by the funding are improving the energy efficiency of a facility and, crucially right now, reducing running costs,” Boardman said.

One of the big focuses of the Every Move strategy is to promote the move to a circular economy. Boardman said this is an area in which Sport England would be using its spending power to help move things forward – such as by promoting and enabling the recycling and redistribution of sports clothing and equipment to benefit grassroots clubs and participants most in need.

Working in partnership

During his speech, Boardman stressed how important it was for everyone in the sector to become “part of the solution” – and applauded those who were already “joining the movement”.

He highlighted the Football Association (FA) and its Greener Game programme, which it is running in partnership with energy giant E.ON. The initiative supports grassroots clubs to decarbonise, reduce their energy needs and cut their bills and environmental impact.

He also mentioned how the Premier League supports clubs to develop their infrastructure sustainably through the LED Floodlight Fund, which provides grants to clubs throughout the National League System and Women’s Football Pyramid to install energy-efficient floodlights, helping to reduce their energy costs and carbon footprint.

Another area in which Boardman said that great work has been done is limiting the use of single-use plastics.

“For example, The Oval cricket ground has become completely plastic-free,” he said. “The venue has banned the use of plastic straws, introduced compostable coffee cups, and has phased out the use of plastic bags in the club shop.

“Elsewhere, The Wimbledon Championships has reduced the number of single-use plastic water bottles by more than half a million over the last six years. They’ve proved it’s doable and, in doing so, created a positive pressure on others to follow suit.”

“We are not trying to sell something unpopular here either. 60% of British adults say they will try to cut down the amount of plastic they use over the next 12 months; they just need to be given a way to join in.”

3G pitches

While on the topic of plastics, Boardman then turned his attention to 3G pitches, describing them as a “difficult issue”.

“If we are going to be authentic in talking about plastics, we do have to discuss artificial grass pitches, a topic that is one of the most difficult in Sport England’s in-tray,” he said.

“From a sporting point of view, artificial grass pitches have become an integral part of community sport because as far as activity is concerned, they’re brilliant. They provide a reliable, year-round playing surface, regardless of the weather. “A properly maintained artificial grass pitch can sustain up to 80 hours of use a week, or 1,400 playing opportunities. Compare that to a natural grass pitch, which can sustain just six hours a week and around 100 playing opportunities. That kind of difference is hard to ignore. “This reliability of service and availability, often in areas of greater need, is incredibly attractive, especially as we’re now much more aware of what the burden of inactivity costs us. People who are already active save our country £540 million on reduced GP visits and £780 million every year on reduced mental health service use. Artificial pitches play a significant part in realising those benefits. In fact, our current stock of 3G pitches across England is estimated to be worth almost £500 million per year in social value.

“But we can’t shy away from the fact that these wonderful health benefits are producing negative costs downstream. The breakdown of plastic grass, and the roughly 50 tonnes of rubber infill each pitch currently requires, are producing microplastics.”

Boardman then outlined two actions that he would like to see from the sports and play sector.

“If we are to continue using artificial pitches, we must, in the short term, get very good at containment,” he said. “At the same time, we need to vastly improve end-of-life recycling.

Up to 500 pitches reach the end of their life every year – two to three times the current UK capacity for recycling at the single venue capable of doing it.

All of us here have a vital role in making our sector sustainable

“If we don’t change, history will judge us and rightly so. I and Sport England are determined to be on the right side of it.”

Boardman then finished his speech with a clarion call for all sports.

“From wireless gears in cycling, super shoes and faster Mondo tracks in athletics, to the widespread use of wearable tech across all levels of sport, the sector has long been at the very forefront of innovation,” “Let’s harness that thirst for improvement and commitment to innovation in the service of something even bigger. Let’s take action we can be proud of.”