Sustainability in Football by Borussia Mönchengladbach

December 02. 2022

Wolfgang Heilmann believes that football is a great place to teach about environmental sustainability due to the extensive possibilities it offers. He stated hat professional football should actively pursue a positive role model to influence its many fans.

Coach Heilmann started by describing the negative consequences of climate change all around the world, like the rising sea levels, and natural disasters, which already have a significant impact on Germany and even more so on Indonesia. He emphasised that it is high time for everyone to change their behavior and that German Bundesliga clubs should play their part too.

So what is Borussia Mönchengladbach doing to be more sustainable? The Bundesliga club has these 3 main goals:

The two most important points Coach Heilmann mentioned are related to match days when more than 50.000 people travel to the stadium, the Borussia Park. Borussia Mönchengladbach tries to make public transport and a journey by bike for fans as easy as possible, to produces less CO₂ than the thousands of individual car journeys would produce.

The club also develops solutions to reduce food and beverage waste during game days, especially plastic waste. Here of course everyone can contribute and play their part too, to protect our environment. 

Borussia also works on plans to create a greener environment with parks and many trees around their stadium and the training fields, incorporating solar panels for energy generation.

After Coach Heilmann’s presentation all of us discussed ideas, what we at Deutsche Schule Jakarta could improve. Here we sensitized ourselves to, for example, be always aware if lights and running air conditioners are really necessary, or if it could be turned off. 

Another topic was the waste separation we apply at our school. We agreed that we will more actively remind each other to reduce the amount of waste we produce and to separate it correctly.

Even if those things seem to be too small to make much of a difference, they are an important part of our journey to become more aware and as sustainable as possible. Therefore all of us must work together and that is why such lectures and discussions are welcome events to make sure that we all move in the same direction. 

If you have any questions or ideas how we could make our school even greener, feel free to contact us!