Vegan club Forest Green unveil new kit made out of bamboo with zebra stripes to ‘confuse opponents’
FOREST GREEN ROVERS have today unveiled the world’s first bamboo football kit - along with zebra stripes to CONFUSE opponents.
The League Two club are already certified as the first to be carbon neutral on the planet.
And now they want to encourage all English teams to manufacture kits that are made from 100 per cent sustainable materials.
And club chairman Dale Vince has not just stopped there. He has had them designed in green and black zebra stripes to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals.
It was all inspired from a nature documentary that Vince watched on television about zebras.
The stripes are natural camouflage so effective for a “dazzle of zebras” - the collective noun for a group - when confusing predators and stopping them from attacking.
Vince said: “The zebras’ unique striping makes it harder for rivals to judge their speed and direction.
“Did you know they used zebra stripes on warships at the start of the Second World War? They did it to confuse the gunners of enemy ships.
MADE OF BAMBOO
“They couldn’t tell which way the ship was steaming, which made it difficult for artillery to be aimed accurately at them.
“So we’re hoping that our opponents will also be confused when they play us and we might even get a competitive advantage.”
Vince – who is a green energy industrialist – is hoping that Forest Green's bamboo shirts will lead the way in English football clubs switching to sustainable materials.
He said: “I never realised until recently that all football shirts are made from plastic – polyester – and I wanted us to change that and make them from sustainable sources.
“So I asked our kit supplier if they could make something out of bamboo.
Here at Forest Green we’re always finding things in football that can be changed
Forest Green Chairman Dale Vince
“You can buy bamboo toothbrushes, sunglasses, all sorts of stuff, and it’s a really sustainable material.
“Also these shirts boost performance. Polyester ones don’t – it loses a lot of energy when your body is dealing with heat and sweat.
“As an athlete you want something that keeps you cool. The bamboo shirts do that – they are a lovely soft material.
“At the moment, it’s 50 per cent bamboo – simply because we didn’t quite have enough time to produce a 100 per cent sustainable shirt due to not being sure yet about its durability in wash cycles at that type of stuff.
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“But that is something we will be developing soon.
“Because of the climate change emergency, we’ve got to change the way we live and here at Forest Green we’re always finding things in football that can be changed – such as single-use plastic straws, plastic water bottles, or whatever.
“And where we see these issues we try to tackle them, and say there is a better way of doing this.”
