SC Johnson, the recognized household products company, has teamed up with Liverpool Football Club to create a closed-loop recycling system for the more than 500,000 plastic bottles that are used at Anfield stadium every season.
The partnership, named Goals for Change, will allow fans attending Liverpool FC games at Anfield to dispose of their plastic beverage bottles in specially marked bins. SC Johnson will collect the plastic and use it to manufacture new trigger bottles for Mr Muscle, one of the company’s cleaning-product brands.
“Plastic waste is a threat to our planet for this and future generations,” said Fisk Johnson, SC Johnson chairman and CEO, in a prepared statement. “At SC Johnson, we believe we all have a responsibility to solve this critical environmental issue. Our partnership with Liverpool FC is one of the many steps SC Johnson is taking to move forward our vision for a waste-free world as it creates another local solution to this global problem by leveraging football to help close the plastic recycling loop.”
According to SC Johnson, Liverpool FC is the first professional sports team in the United Kingdom to relate a waste stream to a particular product. The partnership also aims to raise consumer awareness about recycling and the problem of plastic waste.
Liverpool FC has a lineup of initiatives supporting sustainability, health, hygiene, and greater economic and social mobility for youth in the club’s UK, Asian, and Latin American communities. Goals for Change is only the first of them. Back in January 2021, the club launched a sustainability initiative called The Red Way, which includes football shirts made from plastic bottles, biodegradable cutlery for matchday catering, and recycling of plastic seats.
The SC Johnson partnership with Liverpool FC is similar to existing collaborations with US sports teams, such as Milwaukee’s baseball and basketball teams, the Brewers and the Bucks. In that partnership, the company collects polyethylene terephthalate (PET) drink cups at American Family Field and upcycles them into bottles for Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner.
