Manchester United fan Kym Marsh and Man City fan Craig Cash ditch club colours and agree that Manchester is GREEN to celebrate HEINEKEN UK’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
- KYM MARSH AND CRAIG CASH, DEDICATED UNITED AND CITY FANS PUT THEIR RIVALRY ASIDE AT HEINEKEN UK’S LANDMARK MANCHESTER BREWERY
- THE TRUCE COMES AS THE COMPANY, WITH THE ICONIC LAGER BRAND OF THE SAME NAME, ANNOUNCES A £25 MILLION INVESTMENT TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS
- TOASTING TO A GREEN FUTURE AT THE BREWING FACILITY, KYM AND CRAIG DON NEW GREEN KITS IN CELEBRATION
The debate as to whether Manchester is red or blue has raged for over 150 years, and it has rarely been more acute than in recent weeks after Manchester City secured the coveted ‘treble.’
Today however, two celebrity supporters – Manchester United super-fan Kym Marsh and City fanatic Craig Cash – have ditched their red and blue club colours and agreed that Manchester is in fact green.
The agreement on green becoming the colour of the UK’s second city comes as HEINEKEN UK announces a £25 million investment into its HEINEKEN Manchester brewery to reduce its carbon emissions. The move is in support of HEINEKEN’s global ambitions to reach net zero emissions across all its production sites by 2030.
The two TV stars came together to swap their strips for new bespoke football shirts and clink bottles of Heineken 0.0, at the Hulme site nestled between Old Trafford and The Etihad Stadium - neutral territory for the United and City fans.
Former Coronation Street star Kym Marsh said: “As much as I love my team, my city comes first, and I’m so passionate about this ambition to make Manchester a cleaner and greener place. That’s why I’m pleased to join this campaign and celebrate HEINEKEN’s plans reduce its carbon emissions – starting with the iconic brewery here in Manchester. There aren’t many causes I would swap my beloved United kit for!”
The £25 million investment into the brewery will significantly reduce reliance on gas through the installation of heat pumps, powered by renewably sourced electricity, retrieving and distributing heat through an interconnected heat network across the site, from brewing to packaging. By introducing this circular process, waste heat is redistributed from the brewing process to replace the thermal energy previously generated from burning fossil fuels.
TV Royle-ty and Gogglebox narrator Craig Cash says “I’ve lived in and around Manchester my whole life and I would consider myself an extremely loyal City fan. That said, when it comes to the environment it doesn’t matter whether you’re blue or red, it’s great to rally together and change our strips for the day to celebrate this monumental commitment to the environment and Manchester from HEINEKEN UK.”
The HEINEKEN Manchester brewery produces over seven hundred million pints of Heineken®, Birra Moretti and Foster’s per year, and already has solid sustainability credentials which includes using electricity exclusively from renewable sources, as well as being the first HEINEKEN site globally to roll-out the Green Grip cardboard toppers to replace plastic rings in 2020. This is mirrored at each of HEINEKEN UK’s other scale sites.
Boudewijn Haarsma, Managing Director at HEINEKEN UK says: “We’ve been around for 150 years and if we want to be here in another 150 years, we need to act now to deliver on our sustainability ambitions. In short, we want to brew a better world.
“This announcement is hugely positive and represents a sizeable inward investment from HEINEKEN into UK decarbonisation. It builds on our wider efforts company-wide to reduce our emissions as we continue to work towards our global ambitions to reach net zero across our production sites by 2030, and to operate a net zero value chain by 2040.
“There’s been a brewery at this site for well over 100 years, and we’ve been proudly brewing in Manchester for fifteen years. With the city of Manchester’s ambition to reach net zero by 2038 , we want to play our part in this journey for the city and its people, and to share the learnings we gather along the way.”
To celebrate the announcement, Heineken are giving away 20 new bespoke green football shirts – to find out more and enter, head to @heinekenukcompany.
A CITY, UNITED
17 July 2023
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