As we hit just over the halfway mark on Veganuary, consumers in record numbers commit to ditching meat and dairy for January, while The Vegan Society kicks off a novel way to promote veganism – by being involved with sponsoring a football club. 

The shirts of Forest Green Rovers Football Club – pegged as the first fully vegan and carbon neutral footy club in the world – will be emblazoned with  The Vegan Society’s VEG 1 supplement.

The supplement has become the official sponsor of the professional football club based in Gloucestershire, England.

Forest Green Rovers FC plays in competes in EFL League Two.

The start of the partnership, and to mark Veganuary, staff from The Vegan Society will attend the first VEG 1 sponsored game scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday January 18), in which Forest Green take on Nottinghamshire’s Mansfield Town.

Veganism and football
Forest Green Rovers, described by FIFA as the greenest football club in the world due to being carbon-neutral and only serving vegan food, registered with the Vegan Trademark, are currently top of the EFL League Two.

At the end of the match, The Vegan Society will award the man of the match with a pot of VEG 1, while the players will present staff with a signed FGR shirt.

“A lot of our Vegan Trademark clients are sponsors too, including Ecotricity and Funktional Foods, so it just made sense for our multivitamin product VEG 1 to also get behind the greenest club in the world,” explains Bethany Dandy, VEG 1 marketing officer at The Vegan Society.

It’s clear that this club and the players really care about their environmental impact and we can only hope that other clubs are inspired to consider theirs and follow suit,” she notes.

Following a move last year to become more sustainable, VEG 1 packaging is now made from aluminum – making it 100% plastic-free and fully recyclable. 

The rebrand was two years in the making and was initially inspired by requests for more sustainable packaging from VEG 1 customers.

Consumer discussions around the impact of food on carbon emissions and packaging waste are largely driven by the recent COP26 topics and trials of front-of-pack carbon labeling announced last year.

“Shared Planet” currently leads Innova Market Insights’ Top Ten Trends for 2022, with the market researcher underscoring that consumers now rank planetary health as their number one concern, overtaking personal health, which has been the top priority in recent years.