Fans attending the north London derby or Manchester City’s top-of-the-table Premier League match against Chelsea this weekend may notice something a bit unusual outside the stadiums.
That’s because, when they turn up at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Etihad Stadium, they will be greeted by two faceless fans standing on a plinth, holding a scarf of the home side.
These supporters are not typical visitors to the stadiums. They are plastic fans – literally.
They are in place, not as a comment on the direction of modern football, but as a visual representation of the need to cut down on the use of plastic.
City and Tottenham have teamed up with Heineken for a #NoPlasticFansHere campaign, which is championing the removal of single-use plastics.
The sculptures, which are the work of Sarah Turner, are made from reclaimed recyclable waste plastic.
Both City and Spurs have made impressive progress on the issue over the past few years – and now they are keen to pass on the wisdom to their supporters.
“It’s a demonstration from football and sport in general to fans that this is something they can do themselves, in your workplace, or at home,” Pete Bradshaw, Manchester City’s director of sustainability, tells Mirror Football.
“Why not try, in a planned way, to remove single-use plastics?”
Once inside the stadium for Saturday’s 12.30pm kick-off, Man City fans will not encounter any single-use plastic.
The efforts have been “totally embraced” by City fans, who enthusiastically took to the club’s reusable cup scheme, before it was changed to a compostable alternative.
Thanks in part to the uptake amongst supporters, Man City have succeeded in getting rid of all single-use plastic right across the entire business.
Having picked off the “low-hanging fruit”, Bradshaw says they are now “80 per cent” of the way to doing the same with Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic – the type most commonly used in drinks bottles.
Tottenham hold the title of the Premier League’s greenest club, having finished top of the Sustainability Table published by the BBC last year.
They are on a similar journey to City. The players drink water from cartons and eat food with wooden cutlery which is served in recyclable packaging.
At the stadium, there is wooden and paper food packaging, a zero to landfill waste management programme and a reusable beer cup scheme.
Although Spurs have also decided that any contracts which come for tender must include a requirement to cut single-use plastics, they are yet to achieve full eradication of single-use plastic.
“Cutting single-use plastic entirely is a challenge but one we are committed to work towards and have made significant strides to date,” says Tottenham’s executive director, Donna-Maria Cullen.
Plastic is, of course, just one facet of the drive towards sustainability. After all, energy, transport, water, food and waste are all also of crucial importance in the fight against climate change.
But all of those aspects are large and, at least to some, less tangible elements of the story. The benefit of targeting plastic is that it is easily communicated to match-going fans.
“We can all talk about the importance of this type of energy and this use of water, how this transport can be different, what things are made of,” Bradshaw explains.
“That’s all important, but it’s the applied nature of those things and how they practically impact upon fans coming to the game.
“Plastic, relatively speaking, is an easy one. It’s a physical thing, you can see it and you can see what replaces it.
“That will make it much easier when we do want to talk about other things in the future – and maybe things that you can’t touch but are just as important.”
The hope is that by putting up some eye-catching plastic sculptures this weekend, the clubs can target the most identifiable and relatable piece of the sustainability puzzle.
It may ultimately be a small piece, but by ousting its plastic fans, football can help to make a difference to the bigger picture.