Liverpool's Red Way: How the Club is Building Sustainability into Its DNA

Liverpool have quietly positioned themselves among English football's most serious operators when it comes to sustainability – and they're doing it without the usual fanfare. Rather than chasing headlines, the club has developed The Red Way, a methodical long-term programme that sits at the heart of their broader purpose.

For Rishi Jain, the club's director of impact, the foundation isn't some glossy policy document. It's history itself.

"Being the most successful club in England and one of the biggest football clubs in the world gives us a huge platform," he explains. "That history gives us an opportunity to drive positive change across the three pillars of The Red Way: people, planet and communities."

It's an argument you'll hear plenty of nowadays – that triumph brings duty. But Liverpool frame it differently: less as burden, more as genuine opportunity. The global audience they've built through decades of domestic excellence and European glory becomes a tool for something far bigger than silverware.

Still, Jain won't entertain the notion that mere visibility cuts it. "If we're delivering content, it has to be meaningful, but also engaging," he says. "And when we talk about tougher issues – whether that's equality, diversity and inclusion or emissions reduction – it has to be authentic and genuine."

Now five years into The Red Way, that commitment to authenticity underpins everything. The programme operates around measurable targets across its three pillars, with one deceptively straightforward objective: to "build a better future" for people, planet and communities. Simplicity, though, masks genuine complexity.

"It's a holistic programme," Jain says. "It brings together diversity and inclusion, environmental work, community engagement and collaboration with our commercial partners. Ultimately, the goal is – as cheesy as it might sound – to leave the world in a better place."

Most clubs bandy about legacy in vague, abstract language. Liverpool have actually tried to make it tangible. Crucially, they've done so openly. From day one, the club laid out its targets and welcomed external examination.

"That transparency has led to fantastic conversations," Jain explains. "It's also driven better work as we continue to push our progress."

Progress here is deliberately unfinished business. The Red Way isn't some time-limited campaign with a finish line. It's a constantly evolving set of objectives.

"Will it ever be complete? No," Jain says. "We're constantly expanding what we do. When we reach a target, we set another – usually slightly higher."

Look at the foundation's work: an original aim to engage 150,000 young people has already been overtaken by ambition, with a fresh target of 500,000 by 2030. The thinking is straightforward – hitting targets should spark greater ambition, never complacency.

Some of the programme's real-world effects are anything but abstract. Inside Anfield, behavioural change has become measurable and concrete.

"Our plastic bottle recycling rates have gone from under 25 per cent to around 96 per cent per game," Jain says. "That's been the result of a three- to four-year campaign involving education, engagement and messaging."

More importantly, those habits have stuck around. Even when the club dialled back its messaging, supporters kept recycling.

"That shows we approached it in the right way," he adds.

It's a small but revealing window into football's capacity to reshape behaviour – not through splashy one-off stunts, but via repetition, normalisation and collective belonging. When 50,000 people act together, an intervention becomes culture.

Liverpool have also weaponised storytelling as an engagement tool. A partnership campaign with AXA drew connections between marine ecosystems and football systems, using resilience as the bridge between environmental questions and the game's rhythms.

"It was a really engaging way to tell a story," Jain says. "And it helped people understand environmental health in a football context."

This translation – taking intricate global challenges and rendering them in football's emotional language – is arguably where clubs wield their real influence. Yet it's also where they can stumble, particularly when asking players to get involved.

"The last thing we want is to put players in a position where they're making promises that aren't genuine," Jain says. "That wouldn't be fair on them."

Instead, Liverpool work with players who genuinely care about the cause. Yana Daniels, during her time at the club, championed sustainable merchandise initiatives – not because the club demanded it, but because she believed in it.

"We empowered her to grow that work," Jain says. "And even now, we still stock her products and maintain that relationship."

It's a model that prizes credibility over profile. Players become amplifiers, not appointed experts.

"If we can use their platform, their face and their voice to enhance what we do, then we will," Jain explains. "But they don't need to be the champions of it."

That distinction matters in an age when athletes face constant pressure to pronounce on subjects miles from their day job. By lowering barriers to participation, Liverpool reckon more players will engage – especially on environmental issues, where involvement has historically trailed social justice causes.

For Jain, this convergence of social justice and environmental action is where the real value emerges.

"I'm really passionate about having those conversations side by side," he says. "If you can talk about diversity and the planet together, you start to reach different audiences."

It's here that football's broader possibilities crystallise. The sport's omnipresence, its ability to dominate conversation and cut across age and background, makes it a singularly potent vehicle for shifting culture.

"Football is everywhere," Jain says. "That gives us a real opportunity to talk about important societal topics."

He's measured in framing that opportunity, though. Football can persuade, he reckons, but it can't impose.

"It's about bringing people on a journey," he says. "If clubs are honest and say, 'We're on this journey – come with us,' that's when people start to take responsibility themselves."

For Liverpool, that journey is entering fresh territory. Having shifted behaviour inside the stadium, the next frontier is extending it beyond matchdays.

"What we'd love to do now is influence behaviours at home," Jain says. "But there's a balance. We don't want to dictate or contradict ourselves."

That contradiction he mentions is baked into contemporary football. Expansion – bigger stadiums, larger attendances, worldwide tours – inevitably carries environmental consequences.

"We're not hiding from that," Jain says. "We want to be commercially strong, but at the same time we want to minimise our impact."

It's a refreshingly honest acknowledgement that sits awkwardly with the usual polished sustainability messaging. There are no painless solutions here, no tidy stories. Just trade-offs, openness and steady improvement.

In that respect, The Red Way functions less as an answer than as a framework for posing sharper questions – about football's identity, its significance and its responsibilities to the wider world.

Or, in Jain's words: "If we can encourage people to take small actions, that can collectively make a big difference."

In a sport built on marginal improvements, it's a thought that lands perfectly at home.