1,000 signatures reached
To: Chairman Sir Chips Keswick, Director Stan Kroenke
Arsenal: Ditch single use plastic
Stop using single use plastic on match days and switch to reusable or biodegradable alternatives
Why is this important?
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in our seas. But Premier League football clubs still give out hundreds of thousands of single use plastic items every single matchday. Plastic cups, straws, stirrers, bags, they all end up clogging up our oceans and filling landfills.
Having been a long time supporter of Arsenal, I have been to many matches and been left horrified at the amount of single use plastic given out on match days. From hot drinks served in single use cups, to copious amounts of beer being served in plastic pint glasses, there's plastic stirrers, plastic water bottles and even plastic beer bottles!
The average attendance at Arsenal matches last season was 57,000 people - this means there's an absolutely eye watering amount of single use plastic being used at every game.
Arsenal say they have put in measures to be a more environmental organisation, including separating plastic bottles and cups from waste on match days and passing them on to their cleaning contractor to be recycled. They claim to divert 10 tonnes of plastic and cardboard per month from landfill - but this is not enough. Its fine to state that Arsenal recycle, but we need to see hard evidence of this plastic waste being recycled by their cleaning contractor. Otherwise this is all merely lip service.
More than this, however, we want to see Arsenal move away from single use plastic entirely. The UK does not have the infrastructure to recycle the amount of plastic waste that we produce every year, this means that most of it is shipped abroad - and there is growing evidence that this plastic ends up in landfill in countries such as Turkey and Bangladesh, instead of being recycled.
Arsenal have a huge responsibility to ditch single use plastic - a starting point could be a reusable cup scheme as seen at many UK festivals, paper straws instead of plastic ones, and biodegradable coffee cups. The technology exists to move away from single use plastic - it's time Arsenal took the lead and showed other Premier League clubs the way forward.
