The Amex Community Stadium didn’t win the Albion many fans in the environmental community in Brighton and Hove but Carl Southwell is philosophical about it. “We’re never going to make everyone happy,” he says. “But we’re happy for people to visit and talk to us about what the stadium will do and will continue to do for the environment.”

Carl works for the charitable arm of the local football team, known as Albion In The Community (AITC), as an education senior course leader. However, over the past four months he has also been the environment project coordinator.

AITC is split into four divisions – education, community cohesion, health and sports participation. Six months ago, the Football League Trust, which oversees community work at football teams below the premiership, set out a new agenda which includes a focus on the environment.

Carl says: “At the moment the environmental work sits under the existing four divisions, but we very quickly realised it could easily be a division of its own, and ultimately that’s where it’s going.”

He also very quickly realised that there was so much environmental work going on in Brighton and Hove that it would be foolhardy to compete with or duplicate any existing projects. Instead, they want to utilise their strengths – a 22,500-capacity stadium, filled every other weekend, and a 60,000-strong learners network through AITC – to promote and support businesses or other initiatives with an environmental message.

“We’ve got two main aims,” Carl says. “To promote awareness of the local environment and to empower the local community to make everyday gains for the environment. And we’re looking at those aims across the key areas of water, waste, energy and transport.”

The Albion audience is perhaps not the traditional one for environmental messaging but that is one of the reasons Carl can see so much potential in the project. While the mention of the word “green” might currently come with a certain stigma, the football club has the power to be unconventional and help move people away from whatever perceptions they may have.

He says: “A lot of the 16-to-18-year-olds we’ve worked with didn’t even know Stammer Park was there. We’ve taken them on initiatives up the River Ouse, building outdoor camps and kitchens and then returning it all to how it was. If you say to them, ‘Today we’re learning about the environment’ it would put them off. But we’re able to give them a different view and experience.”

The project is in its infancy but is nevertheless an exciting process for those involved.

“Everything we do could have an environmental angle,” Carl says, from the coaches who work in the community cycling or car-sharing to their destination, to ecologically certified footballs, to encouraging the young people they work with to get their old mobile phones refurbished or recycled.

Carl adds: “It’s a new initiative, it takes time to get an action plan together but we’re talking about the long haul. Right now we’re focusing on some main ideas and pushing hard to get the message out there. We’ve got the means and the media to do it.”

* Find out more about getting involved with Albion In The Community. Call Carl Southwell on 01273 878260