Pioneering sustainability in tennis clubs

Middlesex Tennis is a modern, forward-thinking Charitable Incorporated Organisation which promotes tennis and padel across north and west London.  As one of the largest counties in Great Britain, Middlesex Tennis has the opportunity to make a difference and works hard to encourage its venues – its clubs and parks – to incorporate sustainability-led actions into their day-to-day activities.

In 2024, Middlesex Tennis called for volunteers to form a Green Team to kick-start the county’s sustainability initiatives.  Together, the team developed a comprehensive information pack including pledges and an action plan, encouraging venues to focus on their biggest impact areas: Travel, Waste, and Energy. 

The challenge they found was that, whilst they had created useful resources and had asked venues to get involved in signing the pledges, they did not get the traction they hoped for. 

As a member of the Green Team, June Kirkwood from The PurposePeople had previously attended a couple of The Sustainable Sidekicks’ behaviour change and engagement training sessions, so enlisted Livvy’s support to suggest ways to increase engagement.

Working together with June and Middlesex Tennis Chair, Phil Veasey, Livvy reviewed the approach and made recommendations to address some of the friction points which had already been identified:

• overwhelm
• lack of time and capacity; and
• perceived effort bias. 

The aim was to build on the existing initiatives to motivate venues to act, by convening a series of workshops across the county, to show clubs and venues how to create and deliver on their own action plans.

Bringing people together to inspire action

It was agreed to run a pilot scheme, inviting a core group of clubs to attend a session to develop their own action plans, with the longer-term ambition that this workshop would become a ‘train-the-trainer’ model for engaging other clubs in the future. 

Using the Sustainable Sidekicks ‘Action Plan Engager’ format, a bespoke session was curated to identify: 

The barriers

• The individual, social and infrastructural barriers different segments of a venue might have to adopting different initiatives. 
• For instance:
  • the different approaches required to encourage lift sharing for matches or the use of public transport by juniors, students and adults; or
  • the steps required for the committee, facilities leads or coaches to change energy use related behaviours.

The Motivators

• The behavioural science mechanisms necessary to overcome the barriers, such as:
  • running trials of new initiatives
  • using key figures to model the ideal behaviours; and
  • sharing stories of those people’s experiences. 

Venues already taking action

The workshop presentation showcased the behaaviour change concepts and initiatives through real-life examples from venues across Middlesex:

• The over 60’s team who get the train to away days so they can enjoy wine and cheese on the way back
• Venues that have installed infrared heating, solar panels and changed to LED’s
• Clubs repressurising balls instead of throwing away
  

The pilot workshop provided a learning opportunity and resulted in the development of bespoke action plans for each venue attending.

Even more positively, discussions at the workshop showed that a lot more was happening than was necessarily being talked about. People were carrying out their own initiatives to reduce their venue’s impacts but were not always sharing this information across the wider community.

Reducing the friction to energy transition  

To address one of the key friction points of switching to a renewable energy provider, Middlesex Tennis built a relationship with Octopus Energy. The Octopus Energy team joined the pilot workshop to talk to the venues about the different tariffs available, including options for battery storage for those with or planning to install solar units. 

What has been achieved to date

As a result of the initial workshop of 8 clubs, a WhatsApp group was started to provide a means for the group to share sustainability-related progress and challenges, with check-ins taking place from time to time.

Delivery of the Octopus Energy initiative was delayed due to the US war with Iran, however Middlesex Tennis is now on the cusp of announcing an approach which will benefit both new users and support sustainability initiatives across the county.

Middlesex Tennis has been a contributor to a new initiative developed in collaboration with Tennis Europe. Clubs from the Middlesex pilot workshop are taking part in a new pilot, to introduce a sustainability-led Toolkit to tennis venues across Europe.

A new round of workshops will be taking place across the county, prior to the start of the 2027 tennis season, to kickstart a revised sustainability programme.  Learnings from the pilot workshop will be incorporated into the new workshops.

If you are launching a public focused campaign and need to engage  a range of stakeholders, get in touch to discuss how a behaviour change workshop can complement the research, theory and data.