Women's Only Club Friendly Vegan Badminton Match with Smash Badminton Club
On Tuesday 5th December 2023, we held the third friendly club match of the winter with, Smash Badminton Club.
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, but 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.
Winter term underway!
On Tuesday 5th December 2023, our Club (PBC) played its fifth friendly club match with Smash Badminton Club, a local badminton club in Stanmore, on our home turf. The session started with introductions, briefing on format of the games and some warm-ups. They were spread over the three courts, everyone was in good spirits and showing true camaraderie, even making time to pose for photos after their games! All the games were self-judged, and everyone did their best and in a jovial manner.
Well done to all the participants from both teams!
More coming soon
Vegan Badminton’s journey had just started with there small few steps 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.
