A fanfare for United star Gary (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

A fanfare for United star Gary

8:49am Wednesday 4th January 2012 in Keith Thomson By Keith Thomson

As I was born just around the corner from Kings Cross station, I have always supported Arsenal football club, and that means a less-than- sympathetic view of a successful team from Manchester.

However, I have learned not to jump to conclusions and now have a more favourable view of Gary Neville, once of United and England.

Indulgent and overpaid footballers have a poor record, but this simplistic view is not always true, and it certainly isn’t so with Gary. Last year he put in a planning application for a new house on a Pennine hillside near Bolton and he wanted it to meet a wide range of environmental standards. No doubt he could afford it, but even so not all rich people use their wealth so responsibly.

The single-storey house is built into the hillside and includes four petal-shaped zones that suggest it would be a suitable abode for the Teletubbies.

More importantly, it would be the first completely-zero carbon house in the area as it would be heated by solar panels, ground-sourced heating and its own wind turbine. The latter caused some planning problems and has had to be reduced to less than 30 metres high for the scheme to proceed.

However, Gary hasn’t stopped there and he is one of the two sponsors of a new organisation – Sustainability In Sport – which aims to encourage more community involvement in sport while at the same time reducing the environmental impact. They maintain that while an increase in sporting activity is good for individual and community health, it should not be at the expense of limited planetary resources.

His partner is Dale Vince OBE, the founder of the renewable energy firm Ecotricity, and now chairman of Forest Green Rovers, a non-league football club. It’s the first professional team to play on a pitch recognised by the Soil Association as organic, and it uses water harvested from a stand roof which now boasts 180 solar panels. The club is considering LED floodlighting, and has banned all red meat from the pies and burgers!

Sustainability In Sport aims to challenge all large sporting venues and organisations to make themselves more sustainable. They recommend 100 per cent renewables for heating and lighting, rainwater harvesting and small-scale wind turbines, as well as the use of low-carbon minibuses and more attention to the provision of public transport.

They would be as frustrated as I am by the flaring of gas at the start of cup finals and in the recent BBC Sports Personality Of The Year programme. This casual production of CO2 is a measure of the task facing Sustainability In Sport.