Sustainability in Action at your Club

You can’t pick up a newspaper or listen to a broadcast news report these days without some mention of sustainability, Global Warming and protecting the environment. At the Club we have been working hard over the last few months to get things in place that will help us cut our carbon footprint and packaging waste. Some of these items will need your support, so we thought it would be useful to summarise them for you in one place.

Recycling

We were already recycling some waste but are now about to take things several steps further. Within the next month, we will introduce new bins in the Club to enable recycling of plastic bottles. Our new waste contractor will also be recycling the used coffee grinds that we produce, our used cooking oil, newspapers from the Club Lounge and all of our carboard waste. We will be asking for your cooperation in placing plastic bottles only in the correct bins. Obviously, we have plenty of water fountains around the Club if you wish to bring your own reusable bottle, as many of you already do.

We will also be recycling our tennis balls. We now have a bin in the tennis hall which you can drop your tennis balls into, once you no longer want to use them. The balls need to be in reasonable condition and not written on. The company we have contracted with will then take them away, re-pressurise them and re-use them. We get paid for all the balls in decent condition that they collect and will be putting this money into a pot to help fund our junior tennis development programme. More details will be provided on this as we move forward.

Reducing Plastic Usage

We eliminated plastic straws some time ago. The next step will be to remove the plastic wet kit bags that currently sit in the changing rooms. We already have the spin dryers for swimwear and are now selling branded reusable wet-kit bags at Reception for just £6. Why not purchase one of these and use it to store your wet kit after use?

Finally, we have switched our supplier of “blue overshoes” for those entering wet areas in their normal day shoes (mainly visitors and staff). The new products are also biodegradable, and we have a separate bin to collect these and enable us to reuse them if possible.

Powering the Club

The Club is open nearly 120 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year so our power consumption (gas and electric) is pretty important from an environmental viewpoint. Just after we opened, we installed a combined heat and power (CHP) unit, which makes our plant much more efficient. We are now pleased to announce that we have switched our supplier for 2020 to one that generates its electricity from 100% renewable sources.

The Future

We will continue to look at ways that we can improve the sustainability and reduce the environmental impact of the Club. One item that is already in our sights is to reduce the number of “sachets” that we use in the Club Lounge. If you have any ideas for other initiatives we should be looking at, then please do let us know.