Hector Bellerin
Former Arsenal footballer Hector Bellerin is one of the highest-profile footballers to use their significant platform and voice to talk about sustainability.
Now a Real Betis player, the 30-year-old has taken a leadership role as the chief ambassador for Forever Green – his club’s non-profit sustainability programme.
Bellerin’s passion for sustainability has also seeped through into his clothes. Last year, he released his own clothing brand, which works with deadstock materials to reduce waste.
He previously set up an initiative to plant 3,000 trees in the Amazon for every win his team achieved during his time at Arsenal, and has spoken critically about the plans Fifa – football’s world governing body – has for the 2030 World Cup.
Earlier this year, Bellerin was named in National Geographic’s 33 for 2025 list, and became an ambassador for Green Football’s Great Save campaign.
Jessie Diggins
The most successful American cross-country skier of all time, Jessie Diggins has won three medals at the Olympics and seven at World Championships.
In April 2025, Diggins and her American team-mates wore special-edition ski suits at the World Championships that depicted a melting ice cap as a way of speaking up about global warming.
The 34-year-old has devoted her platform on social media to raising awareness about climate change, with consistent public speaking through interviews and media appearances, discussing the effects global warming has on snow sports.
Sebastian Vettel
Four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel continues to carve out a new legacy for himself away from the racetrack.
Since retiring, Vettel has taken on many projects – big and small.
In 2023, he launched a bee sanctuary at the Suzuka F1 circuit in Japan – a symbolic project that combines his racing career with his passion for the environment. That first bee sanctuary has now expanded to a bee meadow in his native Germany.
During the 2022 season, he stopped travelling to grands prix by plane, instead choosing to drive to as many of the circuits as he could to avoid taking internal European flights.
In the past 12 months, the 38-year-old has particularly focused his attention on what is happening within the Amazon rainforest – one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet.
While in Brazil, he visited the Kayapo people – an indigenous tribe who live in, and depend, on the Amazon. By highlighting this, Vettel is bringing many new eyes to the devastating effects of deforestation.
Sofie Junge Pedersen
Danish footballer Sofie Junge Pedersen has become well known for environmental activism throughout her career, and last year was named by the Guardian as its footballer of the year for her work in this area.
When playing for Inter Milan, she persuaded the team to not fly to matches in the 18 months she was there.
The 33-year-old’s commitment to environmentalism is long-standing.
In 2023, she led a group of 44 players to offset their flights to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. And over the past 12 months, she has continued to call upon European football’s governing body Uefa to mandate clubs to take trains instead of planes where possible.
