Launch of Vegan Badminton
It’s happened, Vegan Badminton was officially launched on Sunday 4th June 2023. Don’t worry if you missed it, read on to catch up with all the activities.
What’s Vegan Badminton?
Vegan Badminton is a Play Badminton Club initiative, to inspire and enable the development of badminton into a vegan friendly game, by doing away with the use of natural feather shuttles.
As a Badminton England affiliated Club we have always played with plastic/nylon shuttles since inception over nine years ago. We passionately believe we can play great badminton without harming animals, especially as technology and materials used have evolved over time.
Badminton racquets used to be made of wood, and nowadays they will be made from an assortment of metals like graphite, carbon fibre, titanium etc. In the old days, animal guts were used in making badminton racquet strings. Modern technology means new materials like nylon (a synthetic polymer) are now used for racquet strings.
Vegan Badminton takes the next step by opting to use synthetic shuttles rather than natural feather shuttles when playing badminton.
We were encouraged by the news from Badminton World Federation in 2020 to introduce synthetic shuttles in international games to make the sport more sustainable by reducing waste and cost of feathered shuttles.
What we are doing?
We have been researching and reaching out to some clubs initially, who also play with plastic/nylon shuttles to participate in friendly matches. The aim is for them to join in league games without having to swap to feather shuttles. We are also working with Badminton England to get the Vegan Badminton league affiliated status.
So, it begins – round one!
On Sunday 4th June 2023, our Club (PBC) played its first friendly with Lord of the Strings, another local badminton club on our home turf. The session started with introductions, briefing on format of the games and some warm-ups. Singles’ games were played first, 3 men’s and 1 women’s games. They were spread over the four courts, and everyone was in good spirits and showing true camaraderie, even making time to pose for photos after their games! The doubles games were next, these were great to watch. The games were self-judged, everyone did their best and in a jovial manner.
PBC were overall winners in the singles and doubles games. Well done to all the participants from both teams!
Round two
The second friendly match took place on Sunday 11th June 2023, PBC played against Navnat Badminton Club (NBC) again on our Club’s home ground.
In the single’s games the home team were winning, but then NBC started coming back strong and took the lead in a few of the matches! Great work NBC, winning the singles games 3-2 with great rallies and good stamina.
Then we had 10 double’s games and NBC’s winning streak just fell shy to give them an edge. The games were full of great rallies, technique and most of all everyone showed comradeship. Our Club managed a decisive 10-0 win over NBC. Well done to all the participants from both teams.
Long journey just started…
Vegan Badminton’s journey had just started with a small step forward in introducing a friendly, social and competitive environment for playing badminton using non-feather shuttles. The road ahead is long, to inspire the rest of the world to follow suite.
Future games
Our aim is to start the Vegan Badminton League in the late summer. We would love to hear from other badminton players and clubs wanting to join the Vegan Badminton movement. Please do get in touch using the link below.
