Environmental sustainability
What impact does your club have on the environment?
In 2022 we at the LTA published our Environmental Sustainability Plan, setting out our ambition to secure a lasting future for tennis in Britain through positive action on climate change and leadership in sustainability.
We want to support the wider tennis community to be more sustainable, in our role as national governing body for tennis in Britain. In doing so we hope to effectively support tennis in Britain in the face of rising energy costs, and changes to the environment.
Does environmental sustainability feature in your overall club strategy or do you regularly discuss sustainability at your management committee meetings?
If not, why not start by stating your club’s position on environmental sustainability publicly. We have a pulled together a statement template as a starter, so please feel free to adopt, adapt and make it your own!
Download statement template
Now you’ve got a policy statement, why not turn this into action.
We’ve created an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan, packed full of ideas you can implement. Just like the policy template, make the plan your own, remove actions, adapt them or create your own.
Reducing energy consumption is now a priority for most organisations, including sports clubs and venues. The below guidance has been produced in conjunction with Carbon Control Limited to help venues better procure their energy and understand energy management, so they can make strategic changes and make a sustainable difference.
Tap or click on the below image to open the guide:
Are you at risk of flooding? Not sure?
Use these templates to help find out whether your facilities could be at risk of flooding and what to do in the event of a flood.
If facilities are at risk, these templates could help you develop a flood plan and highlight other strategies that will help reduce the impact of flooding.
The LTA are working in partnership with GMG, specialists in establishing buying-groups within the sports sector, to harness the collective purchasing power of the LTA Registered Venues to leverage significant discounts across a wide range of goods and services used by tennis clubs.
They can help you in specific areas such as with your electricity & gas (mains and LPG), solar installations, and you refuse collection.
Visit our LTA Buying Group website below for further information:
Pledgeball Leagues are back for 2024
As the tennis community we have a huge amount of power to drive change to protect this sport and the conditions we need to play it.
After running two LTA x Pledgeball leagues last summer, were back and inviting the tennis community once again unite in acting, demonstrating the significant impact we can have together.
By getting involved and encouraging your membership to do the same, you have the chance to win prizes for your venue.
So if you took part last year or are keen to join in this year, let’s start with a little reminder…
Pledgeball, are a research-backed charity that engages sports fans, players, and club members on environmental sustainability in a very accessible and easy way: individuals submit pledges on behalf of their club via an online platform.
The more people who pledge in support of the venue, the higher the venue then climbs up the LTA Pledgeball League Table and the more chances you and your members have of winning prizes.
Each pledge will count towards a combined emissions saving figure, so you’ll be able to see the collective impact you will have as a community.
- Pledges are simple, everyday actions that individuals can take to reduce their carbon footprint.
- The pledges are accumulated into an overall club CO2 equivalent savings figure and fed into a league ladder, which allows comparison and introduces an element of healthy competition.
Prizes
- For the winning venue in each window, you will receive a £500 grant for a sustainability project at your venue. This could be anything that has a positive impact on the environment. Such as:
- Installing water-saving devices to your clubhouse taps and showers.
- Installing a court side water fountain
- Switching to energy-efficient lighting in your clubhouse
- Installing a bike rack to support sustainable travel to your venue.
- Supporting biodiversity through installing a bug hotel, or planting wildflowers or pollinator-friendly plants and flowers
- or we would love to hear your own ideas too….
We will also run a prize draw for all participating pledgers for a pair of tickets to the WTA 500 event held at The Queen’s Club in 2025 season.
We're launching on June 1st 2024 to coincide with the start of the grass court season. We'll be running four rounds, on the following dates:
- Round 1 – 1st June to 30th June 2024
- Round 2 – 1st July 24 to 31st July 2024
- Round 3 – 1st August to 31st August 2024
- Round 4 – 1st September to 30th September 2024
Get involved! Join the LTA Pledgeball League now or make a pledge on behalf of your venue.
LTA x Pledgeball League Table
Check out the League Table to see which clubs are leading the way with pledges. This league tables is powered by Pledgeball so you will need to accept or manage their cookies before seeing the scores.
Venue resources
To help you engage your membership in making pledges on behalf of your venue, we have created some venue resources. These include:
- LTA x Pledgeball Venue Guide
- Explainer Video to share with your membership
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Social media images to create eye-catching posts on your channels and website
- Venue Communications Guide – help you promote to your membership
Tennis Volunteer Community latest Q&A with Pledgeball
Simon Spalter from the Tennis Volunteer Community speaks to Katie Cross about the LTA Pledgeball Leagues and are joined by Sutton Churches and Ilminster tennis clubs who share their stories of LTA Pledgeball Leagues from 2023.
How to pledge
Below you can find a step-by-step guide on how to make a pledge:
How to pledge
Below you can find a step-by-step guide on how to make a pledge:
As a sport, we throw away an estimated fifteen million tennis balls each year in GB. Most balls will only be played with for 4-6 hours on court, but each ball can take up to 300 years to degrade in landfill.
We have been looking at solutions to this problem and are piloting a tennis ball recycling programme, working with Dyuce.
We understand that many clubs may have schemes in place that donate used balls to local charities, schools, dog homes etc. but these balls still ultimately end up in landfill. Dyuce provide a circular solution that collects used balls and recycles the rubber to stop millions of balls from entering landfill.
Once collected, balls are transported to a GB recycling partner to create recycled rubber for new rubber products including soles for athletic footwear.
Pilot stage
Initially, we are working with Dyuce on a 3-month pilot scheme for a select number of venues across Britain.
We will use this space to communicate progress on this pilot but if you would like to learn a little more you can visit the Dyuce website or check their page on Instagram and Facebook.
If your venue is interested in helping us to pilot these projects, please feel free to reach out to us by email:
Below you'll find some useful resources and templates to help your club be more enviromentally sustainable:
Introduction to Saving Energy - Guidance and Tips for Venues
Explore the below case studies to see how other clubs have followed our advice on environmental sustainability:
- Hoole Tennis Club - 'How Hoole is making a difference in the community with a green agenda'
- Halton Tennis Club - 'The phenomenal success of Halton Project Zero'
Share your sustainability highlight
Please complete the fields below to submit your 'Sustainable Tennis Highlight', which will be showcased in our highlights reel.
We hope that celebrating your story will encourage and provide inspiration for other venues to take action to reduce their impact on the environment.
British Association for Sustainable Sport
BASIS (the British Association for Sustainable Sport) has provided expert help to sports clubs, venues, and governing bodies for over a decade – helping you to understand your impact, set targets and implement processes to improve your environmental performance.
Check out their website for all the latest news, guidance, resources, events and training on everything Sustainable Sport:
Sport England Sustainable Facilities
For guidance on embedding environmental sustainability into your facility development plans check out Sport England’s Sustainability pages which include a useful checklist, design guidance and a range of case studies from a variety of sports.
Buddle - Environmental Sustainability
Webinars
Below you can browse through some useful webinars with advice on environmental sustainability.
Share your sustainability highlight
We want to hear your venues' Sustainable Tennis Highlight! Please complete the fields below to submit your story which will be showcased in our highlights reel.
We hope that celebrating your story will encourage and provide inspiration for other venues to take action to reduce their impact on the environment.