By: EFDN

The Planet League Cup brings together 77 professional football clubs, 12 County FAs, and hundreds of grassroots football clubs and schools, to engage fans on climate action, amongst them, Blackburn Rovers. The Planet League Cup is a unique sustainability tournament where football fans score goals for their club by completing green activities like having a meat-free meal, using the car less and filling up reusable bottles with tap water.

The tournament kicked off on 10^th October and ran for five weeks. Each week focused on a particular theme, such as energy, food or travel, and the club whose fans take the most action will win the Planet League Cup. As well as taking the glory, the fan who scores the most goals won a holiday in the UK.

Football fans taking part in the Planet League Cup had dozens of environmentally friendly actions to choose from to score goals. They included unplugging your appliances when they aren’t in use, making the best of your food before it’s too late with an ‘eat-me-first’ box, taking cooler and shorter showers and using public transport.

The ‘LayerUp’ challenge is a new activity for this season with a timely, serious message of putting on more layers of clothing instead of putting the heating on; to save energy and to save money. The LayerUp challenge, created in partnership with BBC Bitesize’s The Regenerators initiative, sees football players putting on as many layers of clothing as possible in 30 seconds.

“We are thrilled at the prospect of inspiring our fans, schools, staff, grassroot teams, patrons, local community and beyond to score ‘green goals’ whilst representing Blackburn Rovers Football Club. Becoming even more environmentally sustainable is high on the agenda of everyone involved with the club, so we were keen to continue our positive partnership with Planet League and take part in this huge national campaign. Everyone here looks forward to tracking the impact we collectively make over the next five weeks – come on Rovers!” – Gary Robinson, CEO Blackburn Rovers Community Trust

“Planet League Cup’s fun activities put football fandom at the centre of tackling climate change, but provide other important benefits, beyond the environment. Healthy eating and choosing active travel over using the car benefits our physical health; being efficient with energy, water and food saves us money; getting into nature and spending time with family and friends aids mental wellbeing.” – Tom Gribbin, CEO Planet League

The 50 Planet League Cup activities include:

• LayerUp – Put on as many layers of clothing in 30 seconds
• No Moura Landfill – Show off your football skills while recycling, backed by Lucas Moura
• Leg power 5k – Go for a walk/cycle instead of using the car
• Pumped up – Pump up your car tyres
• Screens off – Try a screen-free evening
• Over the line – Hanging out the washing instead of using the tumble drier
• Smart move – Get a smart meter installed
• Snap a bug – Get into nature and identify an insect
• Meat-free meal – Eat a meat-free meal
• Bug stadium – Build a football stadium for the bugs
• Fergie time food – Grab some yellow ticket food from the supermarket
• No moo milk – Try plant-based milk
• Charity shop drop – Donate a bag of preloved clothes