WHITEHAWK were in safe hands yesterday as former England goalkeeper David James attended their Community Day to spread the message about the importance of recycling football boots.
The former Liverpool and Man City keeper linked up with energy company Utilita to host the first-ever ‘Football Rebooted Boot Drop’ at the Isthmian South East club. The aim is to re-use at least one million pairs of boots as part of football’s biggest ever environmental campaign.
It’s hoped the Football Rebooted initiative will save families a small fortune and also save the equivalent of 136,000 tonnes of carbon entering the atmosphere – the same as taking 7,000 cars off the road for a year!
Yesterday’s ‘Boot Drop’ enabled locals to donate a spare pair of quality football boots or astro boots.
Utilita’s State of Play report revealed that out of the 74 per cent of families who had been impacted financially by the pandemic, 18 per cent won’t be able to send their kids back to grassroots football as they can’t afford boots and other items such as goalkeeper gloves and shin pads.
Campaign ambassador James said: “This is an extremely thoughtful and impactful campaign that will make millions of people think twice about buying new football boots when there are perfectly good boots available, for free.
“Whitehawk FC is really special club where fans and the community go the extra mile and this is an opportunity to increase donations for Football Rebooted.”
Whitehawk chairman Andy Schofield added: “We don’t want to see any local youngsters not playing football because they haven’t got the right kit. It’s a great idea to recycle quality boots.”
For more information, check out www.footballrebooted.co.uk
