Sustainability at The FA

At The FA Group, we define sustainability as ‘the need to be efficient in the present and ensure that we protect the needs of future generations’.

Sustainability has been a key issue for The FA Group since the new Wembley Stadium opened its doors to the sporting public and music fans in 2007. We developed our first sustainability strategy for Wembley Stadium in 2009 and aligned our Environmental Management System (EMS) at Wembley Stadium to the ISO 14001:2004 international standard.

We’re now focusing our attention on driving our sustainability strategy across The FA Group, managing both our environmental and social impacts. This year, we will be conducting a materiality assessment to understand our key impact areas across all of The FA Group’s activities. We will establish a new sustainability strategy which will be led by our internal sustainability committee ‘FAST’ (FA Sustainability Team).

We’ve already developed a new Environmental Policy to manage our environmental impacts across the business, having assessed how The FA Group’s activities interact with the environment. We have categorised our significant environmental impacts into the following six priority areas: energy, water, waste, transport, marketing and communications and procurement.

We’ve also established a number of programmes to enhance the skills and employability of those in our local community.

• Our Employability Skills Programme in partnership with Young Enterprise introduces key employability skills through fun business activities, supporting the National Curriculum’s aim to offer students a ‘broad and balanced’ education.
• Our Event Day Volunteering Kiosk Programme with DNC is designed to upskill local residents, specifically care leavers, and give them the chance to gain valuable work experience and a route into employment in the hospitality sector.
• Our Sport & Design Programme combines football and design training to engage students considered to be low in confidence, non-sporty and/or have education or social needs. The outcome of previous cohorts has shown that around 60% of students say they are now likely to choose a creative GCSE. The students also say that their confidence increases – by 60% when playing sport, 50% when practising design, and by 30% generally around the school.