Blues launch environmental awareness campaign

Most of the seats are wooden at Goodison Park, which gives us a head start! We could also try using the manure that is currently being served up on the pitch as compost.

This is going to go down well on here. Cue more charity with a football club attached themed posts.

Good policies. An important and socially responsible initiative in my view.

I wonder how those thousands of flags at the Watford game fit into this campaign? Are they bio-degradable?

No doubt the players will be driving leccie cars in the players car-pool!

Cancel the weekly "we're behind the manager" press conference to cut down on hot air. But seriously, it's a good initiative... although, if I was a staff member being encouraged to cycle to work, I might feel perturbed if the higher profile "staff" weren't doing the same.

I hope they're not using Schneiderlin and Sigurdsson to test the lighting motion sensors.

I go along with Brent (3) on this. Anything, however small that helps the environment, is to be encouraged, we all should be doing our share, if not for us then for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They will be the ones who benefit from these schemes; more importantly, they will be the ones who suffer if we don't.

I like the way the Everton keep thier carbon footprint low by deliberately not qualifying for Europe... and, even when they have, choose to keep emissions down by getting knocked out early. I knew there must be a reason why we never play in the Champions League.

John #7 that’s a right rib tickler.

How about launching a campaign to get up the bloody league?

I suppose continuously recycling the ball is environmentally sound. Ditto, hiding our light under a bushel, as we do.

Farcical crap about carbon footprint, when teams are flying thousands of miles to play football games. The UK's carbon footprint is a spit in the ocean, compared to Russia, China, USA.

I heard that Wrightington hospital treated a guy from the Falklands. 16,000-mile round trip just to treat his broken leg. The Falklands have got a reciprocal deal with the UK.

The average American, for example, is responsible for 14.95 metric tons, compared to 6.57 metric tons per person in China and only 1.57 metric tons in India.

Why can't Everton just be a football club, instead of trying to please everyone?

Everton have been recycling rubbish for decades, so there's nothing new here.

It's fine jumping on politically correct bandwagons, but sort out the stuff on the pitch, it's a football club.

Joe,

I am pretty sure our strikers leave only a minimal carbon footprint in the penalty area and I know for a fact the backline is biodegradable.

Hi Brent [3] and Dave [8],

I agree entirely, it's down to us to attempt to make the world a better place for our descendants. It's a shame that some posters find it necessary to make what they appear to consider humorous comments on a serious issue.

Phil I think the Falklands guy hopped on a scheduled RAF flight. Well maybe not hopped with his broken leg.

Thanks for the update, Brent.

Hi Brent [12],

I'm afraid that you have blotted your copybook, and I had so much faith in you.

Not a scintilla of observational evidence exists to demonstrate co2 warms the planet (man made or otherwise). The only long term observational science (800 thousand years of ice core samples) shows a warming planet CAUSES co2 to rise hundreds of years later hence it cannot be a cause of warming

Moreover If we reduced atmospheric co2 by any amount, say 50%, to theoretically allow outgoing radiation to escape and prevent the alleged warming it would be "blocked" by water vapour which shares the same wavelength coverage and much more.

The entire man made climate change meme is the biggest emperor's new clothes story the world has ever seen. Well done Everton for falling for the 3 card trick again

I'm sure plenty will trivialize this initiative and already there are some good (and not so good) gags on this thread. No harm in that.

But as Dave @ 8 points out, it is a long-overdue obligation that our generation has failed spectacularly to fulfill for our offspring.

It must be nigh on 35 years ago that I first read E F Schumacher's Small is Beautiful which left a huge impression on me and shaped various facets of my life.

I've long thought that industrialism, consumerism and exploitation of nature's finite resources was not sustainable and that we were destined to leave a stark inheritance to our children.

I thought I would be long gone before that was the case. With the onset of extreme record-breaking land and sea temperatures each year and the mega destructive weather conditions they provoke, I'm no longer certain that I will have turned to dust before entire ecosystems collapse and the primates known as homo sapiens and the societies that they created collapse with them.

The direct benefit to Everton of this club initiative is that it may save our future Bramley-Moore Dock stadium from being reclaimed by the sea!

Haha, John! I thought I could try to make a light hearted comment having already hopefully established my environmental credentials!

Jay, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson hooked me many moons ago. And Schumacher after that.

I think the two cardboard centre-backs is a step too far!

Here is a post that's been doing the rounds on FB et al. I'm sorry about the size, but it's worth a read.

After our daughter of fifteen years of age was moved to tears by the speech of Greta Thunberg at the UN the other day, she became angry with our generation “who had been doing nothing for thirty years.”

So, we decided to help her prevent what the girl on TV announced of “massive eradication and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.”

We are now committed to give our daughter a future again, by doing our part to help cool the planet 4degrees.

From now on she will go to school on a bicycle, because driving her by car costs fuel, and fuel puts emissions into the atmosphere. Of course, it will be winter soon and then she will want to go by bus, but only as long as it is a diesel bus.

Somehow, that does not seem to be conducive to ‘helping the Climate'.

Of course, she is now asking for an electric bicycle, but we have shown her the devastation caused to the areas of the planet as a result of mining for the extraction of Lithium and other minerals used to make batteries for electric bicycles, so she will be pedaling, or walking. Which will not harm her, or the planet. We used to cycle and walk to school too.

Since the girl on TV demanded “we need to get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels” and our daughter agreed with her, we have disconnected the heat vent in her room. The temperature is now dropping to 12 degrees in the evening, and will drop below freezing in the winter, we have promised to buy her an extra sweater, hat, tights, gloves and a blanket.

For the same reason, we have decided that from now on she only takes a cold shower. She will wash her clothes by hand, with a wooden washboard, because the washing machine is simply a power consumer and since the dryer uses natural gas, she will hang her clothes on the clothes line to dry.

Speaking of clothes, the ones that she currently has are all synthetic, so made from petroleum. Therefore on Monday, we will bring all her designer clothing to the secondhand shop.

We have found an eco store where the only clothing they sell is made from undyed and unbleached linen, wool and jute.

It shouldn't matter that it looks good on her, or that she is going to be laughed at, dressing in colorless, bland clothes and without a wireless bra, but that is the price she has to pay for the benefit of The Climate.

Cotton is out of the question, as it comes from distant lands and pesticides are used for it. Very bad for the environment.

We just saw on her Instagram that she's pretty angry with us. This was not our intention.

From now on, at 7 pm we will turn off the WiFi and we will only switch it on again the next day after dinner for two hours. In this way, we will save on electricity, so she is not bothered by electro-stress and will be totally isolated from the outside world. This way, she can concentrate solely on her homework. At eleven o'clock in the evening, we will pull the breaker to shut the power off to her room, so she knows that dark is really dark. That will save a lot of CO2.

She will no longer be participating in winter sports to ski lodges and resorts, nor will she be going on anymore vacations with us, because our vacation destinations are practically inaccessible by bicycle.

Since our daughter fully agrees with the girl on TV that the CO2 emissions and footprints of her great-grandparents are to blame for ‘killing our planet', what all this simply means, is that she also has to live like her great-grandparents and they never had a holiday, a car or even a bicycle.

We haven't talked about the carbon footprint of food yet.

Zero CO2 footprint means no meat, no fish and no poultry, but also no meat substitutes that are based on soy (after all, that grows in farmers fields, that use machinery to harvest the beans, trucks to transport to the processing plants, where more energy is used, then trucked to the packaging/canning plants, and trucked once again to the stores) and also no imported food, because that has a negative ecological effect. And absolutely no chocolate from Africa, no coffee from South America and no tea from Asia.

Only homegrown potatoes, vegetables and fruit that have been grown in local cold soil, because greenhouses run on boilers, piped in CO2 and artificial light. Apparently, these things are also bad for The Climate. We will teach her how to grow her own food.

Bread is still possible, but butter, milk, cheese and yogurt, cottage cheese and cream come from cows and they emit CO2. No more margarine and no oils will be used for the frying pan, because that fat is palm oil from plantations in Borneo where rain forests first grew.

No ice cream in the summer. No soft drinks and no energy drinks, as the bubbles are CO2. She wanted to lose some pounds, well, this will help her achieve that goal too.

We will also ban all plastic, because it comes from chemical factories. Everything made of steel and aluminum must also be removed. Have you ever seen the amount of energy a blast furnace consumes or an aluminum smelter? Uber bad for the climate!

We will replace her 9600 coil, memory foam pillow top mattress, with a jute bag filled with straw, with a horse-hair pillow.

And finally, she will no longer be using makeup, soap, shampoo, cream, lotion, conditioner, toothpaste and medication. Her sanitary napkins will be replaced with pads made of linen, that she can wash by hand, with her wooden washboard, just like her female ancestors did before climate change made her angry at us for destroying her future.

In this way, we will help her to do her part to prevent mass extinction, water levels rising and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.

If she truly believes she wants to walk the talk of the girl on TV, she will gladly accept and happily embrace her new way of life.

John/Phil

No joking allowed. Some folks take offence even though they are on an internet forum, via a phone or PC unnecessarily wasting resources (electricity, rare metals, plastics etc) to get online and post from their high horses about how other people should not have a bit of light hearted dark humor on what is actually a football forum.

Hi again Brent [22] on reflection, you'll do better sticking to the serious stuff.

Also read Silent Spring, Brent, which certainly exposed the agro-chem industry.

As ever, when such authors expose the cost of big industry on the environment and society, some pretty powerful players lined up to ridicule and debunk them.

Indeed, a conspiracy theory on Schumacher's death persists to this day. Essentially, both authors have been proven correct on their writings.

Point taken, John!
Best wishes.

I recall reading The Doomsday Book, by Gordon Rattray Taylor, just as we were winning the title in 1970. A good book, but not as good as Ball of Fire by Alan Ball.

Jay, what’s the conspiracy theory?

Phil, not really sure the point of the post you have quoted. It seems to suggest that any action taken must be draconian. Sensible steps and reasonable measures are to be ignored. The part about zero emissions is pure storytelling. Great grandparents were using all fossil fuels at a great rate. Facebook posts some odd stuff.

Mr J. 16. Always the most sensible poster week by week on this site. Thanks.

Phil @ 25. I've also seen that.

It's a cleverly crafted piece, but assumes that no alternatives exist now or can be developed in the future to circumvent the challenges. There are and there will be.

It is a complex problem. It is challenging asking people to make fundamental changes and sacrifice or compromise habits that many see as a birthright.

It will take compromise and collaboration and no small change to the typical short termism of politicians and governments.

It may already be too late. We may already have gone beyond a critical tipping point.

But without acknowledging the considerable body of scientific evidence, by doing nothing, an Ecological Armageddon WILL result. A consequence WILL be the extinction of the planet's most dominant tenant.

Being Everton, that will probably happen as it did with two World Wars and Heysel just as we are on the cusp of dominance.

The planet will be fine. Without a singular dominant species it will eventually heal itself, until consumed by its own life giving star.

Brent @ 31.

The usual. That he was done away with by malignant forces who didn't want his beliefs to gain popularity.

Jay, I did post a reply to James, asserting it was airy parciflage, but it hasn't appeared. I also contended, as you have, that it may be too late due to our hesitancy to give up our foreign holidays and creature comforts.

It was inevitable that such an initiative would be treated with scepticism by some. And indeed, when those plastic flags were being waved on Tuesday night, I did wonder where they would end up. Someone’s backyard probably.

But every company/corporation has to have consideration towards its environmental footprint, and this is just part of Everton’s. I have read that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings on one continent can create a tornado on another. I think that’s why I keep renewing my season ticket, in the hope it is creating a trophy-winning hurricane for my grandsons.

Jay @34: Steady on, the two paras before the final one are a bit evangelical! Nobody knows the future, despite the available evidence of conditions to date.

We all have to start somewhere with being eco friendly. Where does Bramley-Moore Dock fit into this? Is that project going to be environmentally friendly?

Wouldn't it be better to redevelop rather than increase our carbon footprint?

Using paper straws and reusable cups doesn't balance against thousands of tonnes of concrete.

Maybe the club should have just introduced those measures and not made such a big deal of it.

Stan @ 38.

In the very paragraph you reference I qualify my view with 3 simple words:

'by doing nothing'

Rob 39

Exactly. Concrete production is one of the fastest growing carbon emitters. That said, I recall at the Beijing Olympics they designed some carbon-neutral eco venues. Technology is there but I assume it's expensive.

Jay, but nobody knows what will happen 'by doing nothing'.

Contrary to popular media accounts of global warming, climate modelling produces theoretical scenarios, each scenario being assessed as having a theoretical probability. These theoretical scenarios and probabilities are produced using mathematical models. These models are such that most climate scientists do not have the background or competence to form a view of their validity. The ranges of probabilities are subject to large uncertainties. There is no basis whatsoever whereby you could say that any particular scenario WILL happen.

I agree with the likes of Jay BRZ that we as humans, and First World humans particularly, must do something to alleviate the disequilibrium long since established on our planet in terms of climate change. Surely nobody disputes the fact that the icecaps are rapidly melting drastically, with huge threat to mankind regardless of the true causes. We have it in our gift to alleviate such damage so I suggest we do what we can, however peripheral it might seem.

That said, I do wonder about the timing from the club in releasing this oh-so-responsible info, but thank them for giving us fans an inkling of what Denise Barrett-Baxendale is truly all about. One day, the marionette will assume the role of the puppet-master if all her dreams come true, I suppose.

Sigh.

By doing nothing, Stan, the finite resources will be exhausted and society, as it is currently maintained, will not be sustainable.

How extreme the impact of such a scenario may prove, and just how it will unfold, cannot be categorically stated.

But it is not difficult to imagine food and potable water would be difficult to obtain; public health systems would collapse; sickness and disease would be epidemic; law and order would also evaporate; 'decent norms' would be sacrificed in a Darwinian fight for the survival of the fittest.

Too fanciful? Too extreme that society and the global population could collapse and reduce so rapidly due to a cataclysmic event?

I recently watched again the excellent low budget BBC drama, Threads, first aired back in the 1980s.

Chillingly, echoing current global politics, due to political arm-wrestling between east and west over the middle east, a nuclear war breaks out.

Not directly comparable to the Ecological Armageddon being discussed in this thread, but the scenarios I describe above are repeated in Threads.

Indeed, if some reports are to be believed, the UK could experience a dose (albeit mild) of some of the above as a consequence of Brexit impacting on supply of food and medical supplies into the country.

No-one can predict with any degree of certainty the future, Stan. But current existing conditions, together with the data of past events, can certainly inform you of possible outcomes if nothing is done, or alternative possible outcomes if different solutions were explored.

Jay, I don't think anyone has said 'do nothing'. I first became conscious of the reliance on fossil fuels when I read Gordon Rattray Taylor's book 'The Doomsday Book' around 1970. I've always been keen on the development of a variety of energy sources, so 'doing nothing' is not an issue between us.

What I am saying to you is very simple. Your statements in those two paras @34 are evangelical and without foundation. There are imagined, theoretical, scenarios, and future reality. Nobody knows the latter, despite all the 'scientific' attempts at modelling. I do know about modelling, so speak from a different, technical, perspective from most folks.

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Mick @47: And as Brian said, always look on the bright side of life (especially if you're an Evertonian).

Stan, I accept your deeper knowledge of modelling. You've shared this with us and your love of mathematics before. I also totally accept your technical perspective you offer on this question.

My perspective is not 'evangelical' as you describe it, but rather more based on the odds of probability. The fossil history shows that entire species disappear, but the planet remains and regenerates itself. We are not exempt from that probability.

The vanity of humanity is that, as possibly the most dominant species that has ever swam, crawled, walked or flown since life first emerged on planet earth, no single species has impacted so much on the extremely sophisticated checks and balances that nature itself evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

If the entire history of planet earth was condensed into a 24 hour clock, modern humans would appear at 23:59:59. That is, we have been tenants of the planet for just 1 second of its entire 86,400 seconds in our imaginary condensed 24-hour clock.

You are then dealing in 'nths' of a second (since the onset of the industrial revolution) when humanity started to gain dominance over nature, depleting its finite resources, harvesting or hunting other species into extinction, creating imbalances in finely tuned ecosystems, polluting its air and water.

Other species, such as the dinosaurs, enjoyed much longer tenancy of the planet without destroying the ecosystems on which their survival was dependent. To this day, there are mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships between all kinds of species. It was only the cataclysmic impact of a meteorite that wiped them out. Their extinction was not of their making.

It took hundreds of thousands of years, but the planet healed itself and life regenerated itself. Such will be the case if and when the last homo sapien breathes its last breath.

Humanity, for all its evident knowledge, science and technology, its ability to shape its environment, cannot supplant nature. We are, in effect, directly contributing to our own demise and extinction.

That's not smart. And contrary to what you say – 'I don't think anyone has said 'do nothing' – some very powerful governments and politicians advocate doing just that. Indeed, some of them deny and ignore the evidence completely and wish to expand and extend some practices which will only accelerate us towards a possible Ecological Armageddon.

In an earlier post, you detailed just one aspect of the environmental question – climate change. Any and every data should be rigorously challenged. And is. But it is not about one single aspect, Stan. Like nature itself, there are many, MANY intertwined threads that make up the whole tapestry of life that are being picked at and unravelling.

Some raiments already look threadbare. Yet others are rapidly going the same way.

By nature (no pun intended) I'm an optimistic type of guy. Everton, that. But I do admit to a growing sense of disquiet about the abuse and depletion of a life-support system on which we are all dependent.

Jay @49: I believe you are focusing on worst-case imaginings. In my experience, there is a lot of ongoing technical work on different energy systems. Worst case is possible, but judgement as to its probability will vary depending on experience. It's not necessarily a bad thing to focus, and indeed worry, about worst-case scenarios if that focus prompts greater efforts on an already expanding subject of diversity of energy supply. But logically, to assert that an imagined worst-case WILL happen is wrong.

As you say, environmental assessment is complex. Indeed, so complex that the subject of this thread, the Everton CEO pronouncing about paper drinking straws versus plastic, and the other subjects covered, is very simplistic. It looks a lot like posturing, jumping on political bandwagons for image. Not necessarily and not always a bad thing, but usually not impressive.

On a football forum, I'd rather read about football.

Raising environmental awareness, good idea. Let's start with the players.

During opposition corners, make them aware of players from the other team in their environment waltzing in past them to score without being challenged.

Also for the forwards, make them aware of objects in the environment of the opposition penalty area like the goalposts and what the bit in-between is for.

Please try harder to prevent a toxic environment getting a grip of our once great club!

We're way ahead of them all. We've cut out cups completely.

We can not put together a decent football team. So trying to save the world is laughable.