Surrey going green as they strive to cut down waste

Three years ago, Surrey’s chief executive Richard Gould was pondering how to deal with beer snakes – the stacking of empty pint cups, which had become ubiquitous during Twenty20 matches. Gould asked how many disposable cups The Oval got through a season.

The answer was 1.3 million. “That was a really scary thought,” Gould recalls. “You multiply that against all the other sporting venues and it would be in the hundreds of millions. That was my light-bulb moment.” Gould admits that he had never even considered the topic before. “Normally in management you deal in pounds and pence and people. Until that point you don’t quantify it – you just see a load of cups arriving and then a load of rubbish leaving.”

In 2015, Surrey abolished disposable pint glasses in the public bars at The Oval. It was the start of their journey into being England’s most environmentally-conscious cricket team. Between celebrating the new signings of the South African Test players Dean Elgar and Morne Morkel, Surrey have spent recent months making a series of environmental announcements, culminat-

ing in yesterday’s news that the club are committing to scrap using all disposable plastic by 2020.

Surrey had already announced that, this summer, they would ban plastic drinking straws, introduce compostable coffee cups, end the use of plastic bags in the shop and recycle their coffee grounds. For the first time, beer in the members and hospitality areas will be served from reusable and recyclable cups.

Last year, Sky’s Ocean Rescue Campaign partnered with Surrey during the Test against South Africa, and handed out 20,000 reusable water bottles. The club funded 20 new water fountains to support the initiative. “We got such a positive response from sponsors and supporters,” Gould says.

The club’s financial power makes it easier for them to invest in being eco-friendly, including funding the estimated £300,000 of installing 250 bar taps for soft drinks around the ground as soft drinks in plastic bottles are phased out. Yet ultimately Surrey view going green as an investment. “It will cost in the short term but in the long term there will be savings. How long does it take to pick up 1.3million cups over a year? How much does it cost?”