Surrey County Cricket Club is today committing to working towards making The Kia Oval a Carbon Neutral venue.
The first stage of the work – to understand the carbon impact the ground currently has – is underway and will inform the Club’s next steps as it continues its efforts to make The Kia Oval a truly sustainable venue.
Sustainability has been a major focus at the Club for a number of years now, with Surrey leading the way on numerous green initiatives, with the Club now serving all drinks in a recycled, reusable glasses.
There are fourteen water fountains installed around the ground, with fans encouraged to bring refillable bottles with them to the game.
On the top of ‘Sylvester’s’, the bar new atop the new Galadari Stand, the Club has installed photo voltaic solar panels to generate renewable energy. These are currently the only panels in the ground, but further sites are being investigated for more to be added.
In 2020, the Club installed a brand-new compostable waste stream at The Kia Oval, in an attempt to solve the problem of waste food accidentally contaminating the recyclable waste stream, unintentionally minimising the amount of waste that was able to be recycled.
With this waste stream now installed, Surrey are actively sourcing food products with recyclable or compostable packaging to sell at the ground. The Club already use compostable coffee cups, which can be put into that stream and then industrially composted.
Other areas of the Club’s sustainability drive include plastic straws being banned from the ground since 2018 and plastic bags not being used in The Kia Oval shop for the same amount of time.
Surrey also has a partnership with the innovative clean food waste technology company ORCA, whereby waste food in the ground’s kitchens is loaded into a machine that slowly dissolves it, mimicking the natural digestion process, and allowing the waste to be disposed down the drain, greatly reducing the amount of traditional ‘truck and bin’ collections at the ground.
Charlie Hodgson, interim Chief Executive of Surrey CCC, said: “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do as a Club, and we will continue to work to drive improvement and innovation in this area at all times.
“Some of the challenges thrown up by events over the past eighteen months have made creating improvements in this area increasingly challenging but – as markets start to return to where they were before the pandemic – we will start moving forwards once more.
“Ensuring we make a positive contribution to our immediate local community, the wider city of London and the world beyond is incredibly important to us and this latest commitment is an example of how we will continue to work.”
