2021 has been Football For Future’s first full year of existence and, from players speaking out, to league-wide climate commitments, it has coincided with some of the most exciting advancements of sustainability in football that the beautiful game has ever seen.

Our year began with a trip to North London to visit Thom Rawson, FFF's Head of Sustainability in his role at non-league Hanwell Town as English football's first ever Chief Sustainability Officer. You can see the video we made here, and read more about Hanwell FC’s goals here.

We were delighted to have our Chairman, David Goldblatt, feature on the legendary Guardian Football Weekly Podcast, and we have since featured in a number of national media publications across BBC Sport, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express.

We were really excited to get to Wembley for Euro 2020 and speak to England fans about their thoughts on increasing sustainability in the beautiful game. Needless to say, they were all very passionate and positive about this growing space.

This summer, FFF began work on our first Premier League club sustainability project. We’ve been helping with auditing, strategy building, staff training and developing departmental action plans to help clubs fully engage with climate action. These projects are proof of concept that football can bring about positive environmental impact, whilst improving the game for all stakeholders involved.

In September, FFF launched our football-focused climate and sustainability workshops - the first of their kind in the country. We kicked off this education programme with Nike, delivering to the foundations of Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC, and with football-for-good charities Bloomsbury Academy and Football Beyond Borders.

Football For Future’s educational workshop at Stamford Bridge.

This year has also been historic with professional players becoming involved with the Football For Future movement, a potential highlight being 2021 Ballon d'Or nominee Mason Mount introducing our educational workshop with European Champions, Chelsea.

We also launched our Player Champion service, as we worked with Southampton striker Katie Rood and Wycombe Wanderers midfielder David Wheeler on short video campaigns discussing to give the opinion of professional players on climate action and the role that football can play in tackling the issue.

On the back of these projects, wider coverage of FFF’s work was reported across industry leading football media including Mundial, Soccerbible, The Athletic, Versus, and the Price of Football podcast.

We took this momentum into COP26, as the FFF team visited Glasgow for the world’s biggest climate summit. This trip culminated in our first ever in-person panel, with representatives across the Scottish football community including:

Eva Ralston - Captain, Strathclyde University Women’s Football Club
Chris Gaunt - Finance Director, Hibernian FC
Andy Smith - Chairman, Scottish Football Supporters Association
Norman Gill - Chief Operating Officer, Street Soccer
Iain McMenemy - Chairman, Stenhousemuir FC

The event was chaired by prestigious climate journalist Wolfgang Blau, and we were delighted to welcome individuals from across Scottish football who spoke passionately about how football in Scotland can take climate action. It was also great to meet so many other organisations working in the football and sustainability space, including our friends at Pledgeball, Spirit of Football, Sport Positive, and BASIS who are all blazing a trail in this space too.

2022 promises to be even more action-packed, as we are ready to build on our experience from the past twelve months to support more clubs, players and fans with the tools they need to build a more sustainable culture in the beautiful game.

Happy New Year from the FFF team.