Highlights

A Different Approach to the Holidays

Is anyone feeling a little different heading into the holidays this year? We certainly do. The last few years have been an unprecedented opportunity to know what it feels like to ride a roller coaster with all of humanity. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss a Six Flags promotion. We’re referring to the shared emotional experience of disorientation and uncertainty. No height restrictions or tickets are needed; we’re talking free, open, and mandatory for all. 

The aftermath of this extraordinary period will, of course, continue to play out for many years. If we’ve learned anything from this experience, we know we can’t read the tea leaves of what the future will hold, but we now have a sense of how interconnected and reliant we are on one another, whether we like it or not. To get through periods of instability and uncertainty together, we obviously still have our work cut out for us. As a club, we recognize the need to do this work now, to build community in a way that honors our interconnectivity and enables more of us to push for and participate in the changes needed to address our greatest environmental justice challenges.  

To those of you who lost loved ones, we send our deepest condolences. To those of you who suffered emotionally, physically, and financially, we wish you strength, stability, and consolation. We hope the spirit of the holiday season can be one of solace, renewal and restoration of relationships, and feeling a deeper connection with our communities and nature. Let’s use this time to cultivate a fresh perspective on how to live well with what we have, with the time we’re given, and with greater attention to what truly brings us happiness, joy, and meaning.

A Different Kind of Club

It’s no coincidence the Pandemic was the time when the idea for this club was born. The folks that brought this club to life all shared a feeling that humanity is deeply out of sync with what matters most: cultivating restorative relationships with our fellow humans and a regenerative relationship with the natural world. That feeling is the driving force that pushed us to rethink how football could serve the greater good of society. 

That is why we’re looking at the holiday season differently. We are focusing more on the values that are at the heart of the club. What follows is our approach and an invitation to join us in making the holiday season one that can serve our happiness, the planet, and our society.

Holiday Pressure

It’s the holiday season and we’ve been such good little boys and girls all year that we deserve to let our inner tigers and tigresses out of their cages for some guilt- and worry-free shopping, right? Businesses, marketers, media, economists, and celebrities trumpet this behavior with such fervency, why should we feel any other way? It’s going to feel so good, we are told, and dammit, we’ve earned it! We hear you and agree we all deserve some happiness over the holidays. But we also know that the torrent of pressure to shop can be stressful. It can lead us to less-than-desirable outcomes for our household finances, fuel feelings of disappointment or guilt, or just exhaust us with more things to do. Sadly, as we work to manage the particulars of the holiday season, there is an unsavory reality, often hidden from view, that our holiday shopping can contribute to. Unfettered consumption is causing climate change, mass extinction of plant and animal species, and environmental injustice on a huge scale.

Instead of hammering you over the head with the bad news — don’t worry, we’ll get to that — we want to try something different first. We want to suggest some practical measures, backed by science, that you can take to inoculate yourself from the shop-‘til-you-drop fever. The CDC has some new guidelines, you say? Big pharma is coming to rescue us again?! Nah, this is all you, friend. 

Going From Shop-‘Til-You-Drop To Drop-‘Til-You’re-Ready-To-Shop

Science tells us there is a bit of age-old wisdom that can help us better manage the holidays: look for reasons to be grateful. It turns out the pitiful voids in our life that we’re told exist by other people or marketing campaigns is just some crap messaging that we can deposit right in the toilet if we wish. Intentionally practicing gratitude, on the other hand, is the superpower no one told us we had. Perhaps that’s because it puts the power back in our hands to make decisions to feel good right now, and better understand what we really need. It turns out we all have innate wisdom and agency to choose for ourselves what we actually value, what brings us real happiness, satisfaction, and contentment.   

To better understand the power of gratitude, it’s helpful to understand why we need to practice it in the first place. Our brains are wired to maintain a baseline level of happiness throughout our lives, whether we win the lottery or suffer a life-altering setback, like paralysis. What this means is the pursuit of more things may provide us with a temporarily uplifting experience, but that experience will eventually fade back to our baseline. Scientists have called this the “hedonic treadmill.” Perhaps you’ve experienced that feeling of chasing the thing you think will increase your happiness, only to find out once you have that thing, your happiness pretty much returned to where it was in the first place. And soon enough, we are rushing on to that next shiny thing we just know is gonna send our happiness off the Richter scale.

The good news is our baseline of happiness is not fixed for life, we can indeed raise it over time. It takes practice, of course, but it is a relief to know that we can put our energy into what truly contributes to long-term happiness, rather than wasting it running to nowhere on the hedonic treadmill. There are a variety of ways to get off the treadmill, but we’re going to focus today on the one that we feel really captures the spirit of the holiday season.

Practice Makes Happiness

Take a few minutes today to intentionally drop your thoughts and ideas about what you think you’re lacking in your life and all of your reasons why you feel pressure to shop this holiday season. Abandoning our preconceived notions, even for a few minutes, can provide a little space in a crowded mind – a space that we can use to ask some important questions. What really makes you happy during the holidays? What do you really need right now? When we take time to pause, breathe, question our immediate conclusions, and observe what thoughts or feelings come up, we open ourselves up to our innate wisdom and agency to be our own source of happiness. 

We started a related process as a team before meetings. We pause, step back from the raging river of thoughts about to-dos, timelines, responsibilities outside of the club, challenges in our personal lives, and concerns about what the future holds, and settle into mindful breathing for a couple of minutes. Like setting the snow globe down that you were thinking about getting your grandma as a present, these moments allow the flurry inside our minds to settle. The purpose is for us to be more present in the moment, and the result has been more calm, clarity, and cohesiveness in our meetings. As the dust settles, what is truly most important – our shared values – emerge as our center of gravity for making decisions. Interestingly, gratitude often emerges naturally in this context.

If you’re new to the practice of gratitude, try this five minute exercise. Go ahead, give it a shot. We’ll wait 🙂

If you just took some time to mindfully breathe, and practice gratitude, we hope you discovered even the tiniest of sparks for what could be a richer, more meaningful, and happier experience getting through the holidays this year.

A New Model of Consumption and Production

The very foundation of the club grew out of a process of reimagining and articulating a vision of how we could operate in a way that moves us towards a more regenerative relationship with nature and more restorative relationships with our fellow humans. We understood that our very existence would require some form of consumption – we have to generate revenue to fuel our operations now and in the future. How to generate that revenue, however, does not mean we must play the old game that causes so much harm to nature and the people who are part of the lifecycle of the products we sell. 

There are some ugly and intolerable truths embedded in the apparel, textile, and fashion industries. That is because the model of production and consumption we’re most familiar with was not designed with what nature needs from us, nor what produces real happiness and well-being for the people working to fulfill our desires for more things. The model is linear in nature: we take raw materials from somewhere, those materials are made into products, we buy and use the products, and then we dispose of them. This model makes sense because it is straightforward, literally – most of us find it easier to think linearly. But it also makes more sense when viewed from the perspective of a resident living in a wealthy country, enjoying a lifestyle where they can satisfy many of their needs and wants. If we’re lucky enough to be born in such circumstances, and have enough money, we can live relatively free from the consequences of excessive consumption. However, this privilege doesn’t extend to all residents of wealthy countries – a person’s socioeconomic situation and racial identity make a statistically significant difference when it comes to exposure to pollution. Research shows that 79 percent of municipal solid waste incinerators are located in low-income and BIPOC communities. When burned, the plastics and dyes in our clothing emit particulate and toxic pollutants into the air that are hazardous to human health, disproportionately impacting communities closest to incinerators. And there is a relentless and ever-increasing amount of waste to fuel the pollution in these communities. Just consider the clothes we buy: we burn or landfill one garbage truck of clothing every second, which is enough to fill 1.5 Empire State Buildings every day.

The situation in the U.S. reflects a global trend where waste is dumped in, you guessed it, communities without the financial resources to defend and protect themselves against pollution, causing tens of millions of people to suffer from strokes, cancers, respiratory problems, and heart disease as a result of toxic contamination of their environment. The people living in these “sacrifice zones” suffer physically and psychologically as targets of exploitation and stigmatization. Meanwhile, to satisfy the lifestyles of people in the richest nations, consumers are heavily dependent on resources extracted from poorer countries. 

Resource consumption is driving environmental crises that are hitting the people and communities with the fewest resources to adapt the hardest. And it’s not just people who are the recipients of the consequences of consumption. The pressure humanity puts on nature through our insatiable consumption – which wealthier countries are disproportionately responsible for – paired with linear thinking, is devastating the plants and animals we share this planet with. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any point in human history, and nearly 1 million species are at risk of extinction from human activities. We are indeed in a mass extinction event, which we are responsible for. This trend is likely to continue as global resource use has doubled since 1990 and is expected to double again by 2060. This consumption accounts for 50 percent of the world’s climate impacts and 90 percent of global biodiversity loss. 

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.

First, we can take stock of our own behavior through some simple practices like the gratitude and mindfulness exercise noted previously. Second, we can demand better from businesses and governments by transforming the linear consumption-production model into a circular one. If fully realized in apparel and other industries, circularity has the potential to change the way we consume in profound ways. As the name suggests, businesses have to think about and engage with the entire lifecycle of the products they sell. Consumers can do the same, essentially becoming part of the supply chain by keeping our stuff out of the garbage and in circulation. As we engage in circular thinking, it becomes clear how interdependent we are with nature and the rest of humanity. 

This is how we started the process of designing our apparel program at the club. What we found is there are many starting points to circularity, and the most important thing we could do was to just start somewhere. So before you start checking off the items on your shopping list, take a moment to ask some questions about the lifecycle of the stuff you’re buying. 

Linear versus circular

Here are just a handful of questions that helped us decide what products we’d offer to our supporters:

Who’s making our stuff and how are they treated?

Depending on where your clothing is made, the health, safety, and wage practices for workers will be different. If the brand doesn’t make it easy for you to understand how it’s protecting workers in its supply chain, you may be inadvertently contributing to harmful practices. Consider that garment workers, primarily women, in Bangladesh, make about $96 per month. The government’s wage board suggested that a garment worker needs 3.5 times that amount in order to live a “decent life with basic facilities.” Additionally, a 2018 U.S. Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labor in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam, and other countries.

What’s our stuff made out of and what’s the impact?

Different fabrics, and the type of dye and chemical treatment in production, make a big difference in the impact on the environment and the health of the workers in the supply chain. It also makes a difference in terms of pollution in the communities where we dispose of our waste. For example, it takes 2,700 liters of water to produce one non-organic cotton shirt, which is enough water for one person to drink for 2 ½ years. On the other hand, organic cotton requires 91% less water to produce. Using organic cotton also reduces the crop’s contribution to global warming by 40%. When we use recycled cotton to make our clothes, we see CO2 emissions fall by 80% compared to conventional cotton. When it comes to treating our clothing with dyes and other chemicals, 20% of global industrial water pollution is due to the dyeing and treatment of textiles. 

How is our stuff being disposed of?

If you’re read this far, bear with us as we retrace some critical points. As we noted previously, we burn or landfill one garbage truck of clothing every second, which is enough to fill 1.5 Empire State Buildings every day. Burning our waste is a major environmental justice issue because research shows that 79 percent of municipal solid waste incinerators are located in low-income and BIPOC communities. When burned, the plastics and dyes in our clothing, and other garbage, emit particulate and toxic pollutants into the air that are hazardous to human health, disproportionately impacting communities closest to incinerators. This reflects a global trend. Our waste is dumped in, you guessed it, communities without the financial resources to defend and protect themselves against pollution, causing tens of millions of people to suffer from strokes, cancers, respiratory problems, and heart disease as a result of toxic contamination of their environment. The people living in these “sacrifice zones” suffer physically and psychologically as targets of exploitation and stigmatization. 

What is the end game of endless consumption?

If everyone lived like the average American in 2018, we would need 5.1 Earths to satisfy that demand for natural resources and to absorb our waste. In 2022, humanity exceeded the planet’s ability to contend with this amount of resource and pollution pressure on July 28. This is like exceeding an annual budget only seven months into the year without a plan to manage our finances for the remaining five months. And we’ve been doing this for years. This is obviously exceptionally reckless, but it is also deeply unjust as should be clear in the striking inequality at the heart of the pattern of consumption and who is harmed the most by the environmental crises caused by human consumption.

Drop the Old Story, Embrace Gratitude and Circularity

The story we’ve been told about how to reach ever-increasing heights of satisfaction and happiness is a fairytale. If we take this story at face value, we will move through life in an unconscious pattern of consumption, and may ultimately discover we never actually arrive at our ultimate destination of satisfaction and happiness. Instead, we can pause, slow down, recognize we have a choice and trust our own wisdom that tells us what the real sources of happiness are in our lives. From this vantage point, we can see more ways to participate in transforming the model of production and consumption towards circularity. We hope you’ll join us in creating a new story, and building a new model for happiness this holiday season.

The Road to Circularity at VGFC

We set our intentions to make sure that each product we offer plays a part in building the circular model that is needed to get us off the destructive path we’re on. We are not perfect, but have started the process with some fantastic partners. Below are some descriptions of our products and partners that we are happy to share with you this holiday season:

The Kits

  • The home jersey is made from 23 post-consumer recycled plastic water bottles, while our away jersey and shorts weigh in at 26 and 22 recycled plastic bottles respectively. Each product is Global Recycling Standard certified and we’re playing a small part in helping our manufacturer convert more than 12 million recycled plastic water bottles into new products.
  • The factories that produce our jerseys have award-winning recycling and waste management systems that include paper, metal, plastic, fabric, food, hazardous, and mixed waste. Waste fabric from jersey production is collected and sent to a facility to be upcycled into other products.
  • All packaging, right down to the care label is made from recycled materials only.
  • The two factories that produce our kits are covered in 992 solar panels that will generate power savings equivalent to over 340 tons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to taking nearly 74 passenger vehicles off the road each year. 

The Scarves

  • The Winter Scarf is produced from 100% organic cotton that meets the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). 
  • The Summer Scarf is made from recycled sea plastic, and is certified by SEAGUAL.
  • Both products are produced in a facility that is a member of ISO 9001 which is the international standard for quality and ethically sourced raw materials.

The Beanies

  • The VGFC Beanie is made from 60% Polylana fiber, which is 100% traceable and recyclable, uses less energy and water, and produces less CO2 during production compared to acrylic and wool. The remaining 40% is an acrylic blend.
  • The Green Hemp Beanie is made of 55% hemp and 45% organic cotton. Hemp is biodegradable and requires virtually no pesticide applications to cultivate. University of Cambridge researchers found industrial hemp can be up to twice as effective at sequestering carbon as forests, depending on a number of factors. Organic cotton has a host of environmental and environmental justice benefits compared to conventionally grown cotton, including carbon pollution, water, biodiversity, and worker health.

The Caps

  • The Dad Cap is produced with 100% organic cotton. Check out this VGFC blog post for more facts about organic cotton. 
  • The Trucker Cap is made from 70% organic cotton and 30% recycled polyester.

The Tees

  • All of our t-shirts are made from recycled or upcycled materials, or organic cotton sourced from the U.S. southeast. For example, our Classic Tee is made from 40% recycled polyester and 60% upcycled cotton. No dyes or additives were used, and all of the color comes from upcycled cotton scraps. It can be returned to our partner Recover Brands at the end of its life to be recycled into new products.

The Hoodies

  • All of our hoodies are made from recycled or upcycled materials. For example, the VGFC Hoodie is made from 40% post-consumer plastic and 60% upcycled cotton. It can be returned to our partner Recover Brands at the end of its life to be upcycled into new products.

Wallets

  • Our wallets are made from a material called MIRUM® (made by NFW), which is 100% bio-based with zero plastics. It’s made from natural rubber and coconut fiber and it has properties that are very similar to premium cow leather. And because it’s made from plants, the material is sustainable and circular, meaning it can be disassembled at the end of its life, ground up and put back into the soil to feed new raw materials. At the end of its useful life, you can send your wallet back to our partner, WoollyMade, who will grind it up and use it as nutrients in soil to produce raw materials for new wallets.

Bucket Hat

  • The Hemp Bucket Hat is made of 55% hemp and 45% organic cotton.

Water Bottle

  • Our water bottles are made from 100% recycled PET.
  • We do not sell water at our matches. Instead, we fill several ten gallon jugs of water that supporters can use to refill their water bottles. We made sure to communicate regularly with supporters to bring refillable water bottles, but for those who forgot or didn’t get the memo, we bought these to help them out. As it turns out, our supporters were up to the task of bringing their own water bottles, so we’ve got extra bottles in stock for those of you who need one!