Time to think.
How Arsenal is showing the way to a better future
The mantra of the virus: keep your distance, avoid social contact. This applies as much to professional footballers as the rest of us, because it is so important to maintain our personal space to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The unprecedented drive to self-isolation is giving us more time to think and prepare for a better future. A look at Arsenal shows that they are already putting a 'better future' in place. This article is intended to encourage positive thinking; yes, football will return and yes, yes, we can return to building a more sustainable future!
Let's take single-use plastic out of the beautiful game
Arsenal saved 500,000 single-use plastic cups from being thrown away. It's time to give single-use plastic the boot. The football club realised their responsibility as an international club with fans from all over the world and started the reusable cup project together with their beer partner at the end of May 2019.
Deputy Stadium Manager of Arsenal F.C. Michael Lloyd says “We’re an international club, our fans are from all over the world and if we can just start to influence a few of those to say, how can we be a little bit more sustainable, then we’re doing a great job”. Learn more on the club’s reusable cup project in this video.
“On average we were using 20 - 25,000 single use cups a game, so now we’ve been able to remove that, we’re up to half a million single use cups, taken out of the waste stream."
Michael Lloyd, Deputy Stadium Manager Arsenal F.C.
Increasing recycling rates is key
Global Recycling Day was created in 2018 to help recognize, and celebrate, the importance recycling plays in preserving our precious primary resources and in securing the future of our planet.
It has identified the seventh resource: Recycled materials, currently supplying 40% of the world’s raw material needs.
The Global Recycling Day Seventh Resource Manifesto points out that, "The solution to one of the most fundamental and urgent problems currently facing our planet is right on our doorstep. The Seventh Resource isn’t finite. It can be used again and again and again. Sometimes indefinitely."
"Recycling is a key part of the circular economy, helping to protect our natural resources. Each year the ‘Seventh Resource’ (recyclables) saves over 700 million tonnes in CO2 emissions and this is projected to increase to 1 billion tons by 2030."
Source: www.globalrecyclingday.com/about
The mission of Global Recycling Day is twofold
1. To tell world leaders that recycling is simply too important not to be a global issue, and that a common, joined up approach to recycling is urgently needed.
2. To ask people across the planet to think resource, not waste, when it comes to the goods around us – until this happens, we simply won’t award recycled goods the true value and repurpose they deserve.
Reusing materials is sustainable
We cannot wait for plastic recycling rates to increase. We have to act now. Just like Arsenal did. Therefore, washable solutions come to the fore. An ever-increasing number of stadium caterers and stadium operators search for more options to kick single use plastics out of their premises. And it’s high time they to do so, since initiatives such as “Get pointless plastic out of football” by Friends of the Earth encourage football fans to “give plastic the red card”. Fans can sign up to support the campaign and thus urge their football club to install a reusable cup system.
Out of the beautiful game since 2006
Taken out of the beautiful game! Single-use plastics did not play any role in the FIFA world cup in 2006 in the Stuttgart stadium in Germany. Here the German non-food caterer cup&more washed 1.5 million hard plastic cups. Installed in a truck the non-food catering team provided clean crockery with the help of the flight type dishwashing machine M-iQ from Meiko. In anticipation of the next kick-off, we hope that football fans will once again be able to watch the beautiful game from the stands - ideally with a cold drink out of a reusable cup.
Increasing recycling rates and implementing reusable solutions. More and more organisations are becoming aware of their responsibility and act.
"In a few years people will be ashamed to be seen walking down the street with a disposable cup."
Michael Andresen, Founder cup&more - Andresen Mehrweglogistik
Washing reusable dishware with MEIKO commercial dishwashers
Non-food logistician cup&more washes in the truck with the M-iQ flight type dishwasher
Clean and dry. Ready for storage. Reusable plastic cups after cleaning in the M-iQ dishwasher.
Reusable cups on their way out of the M-iQ commercial dishwasher
Would you like to learn more on MEIKO’s clean solutions of cleaning cups? Send it to us here.
