Originally painted green in 1947 to cover a slew of advertising images, Fenway Park’s left-field wall has been affectionately known as the Green Monster ever since. Yet until recently, there has been little that was sustainably green about ye olde ballpark save for the non-electric, hand-operated scoreboard in the wall.
In 2008, however, the Red Sox became “the first team in major league baseball to install solar thermal panels at their ballpark,” reads the team’s “Red Sox Go Green” webpage. According to their calculations, the panels, which heat much of the water used at Fenway, “replace 37 percent of the gas traditionally used for the process … [to] avoid 18 tons of CO2 emissions each year.”
It’s certainly not a “green revolution.” But it is a sign that sustainable architecture is trending, both in Boston and across the rest of the sports community, as several franchises team up with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to make sports go green.
“If you want to change the world,” admits Alan Hershkowitz, senior scientist for the NRDC, “you don’t emphasize how different you are from everybody else. You go to where Americans are at.” And today, that means traipsing through the world of sports, no matter how bizarre its culture may seem.
Ah, sports. It takes the viewing experience of approximately one commercial break of a televised athletic event to observe 90 percent of what now defines sports culture in America: bad beer, big trucks and scantily clad women. With only so many 24-hour ESPN channels, regional Comcast sports networks, websites, fan blogs, sports sections in newspapers (yes, still newspapers), radio talk shows and glossy-print magazines, it’s easy to surmise that there isn’t room in our daily discussion of athletics for anything else.
Fortunately, Hershkowitz thinks there is.
A little environmentalism with your sports spectatorship, anyone? Just remember to recycle your Miller Lite can after washing down your Viagra pill, please.
It seems unbelievable, but Hershkowitz is intent on infusing America’s spectator sports culture with an environmental ethic. As senior advisor to the Green Sports Alliance, a coalition of professional sports franchises, stadiums and arenas in the Pacific Northwest, he is attempting to do just that. And the environmental efforts are being felt far beyond the snow-capped Cascade Range to Boston, and beyond.
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The next time you turn on Monday Night Football to watch a prime time game from Philadelphia, don’t be shocked to see an array of solar panels and wind turbines powering the 70,000-seat stadium.
This NFL off-season (which, at the current rate of labor negotiations, could last for some time), the Philadelphia Eagles are spending upwards of $30 million to power Lincoln Financial Field with almost 100 spiral wind turbines, over 2,000 solar panels and an onsite dual-fuel plant, “making it the world’s first major sports stadium to convert to self-generated renewable energy,” their press release reads.
That’s right. An off-grid stadium. An off-grid football stadium, no less. In Philadelphia, proud home of the most despised sports fans in the country. Sort of makes you feel all warm and mushy inside.
“We believe the iconic stature and universal appeal of professional sports can become a powerful, visible, motivating example of how renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels and create a cleaner, sustainable environment for people everywhere,” stated Eagles co-owner Christina Lurie.
Since Philadelphia’s football franchise launched its “Go Green” campaign back in 2003, “several other teams have joined the eco-friendly bandwagon, including the New England Patriots, San Francisco Giants, Phoenix Suns, New York Jets and Seattle Mariners,” reported The Environmental Leader. Most other teams’ environmental efforts have thus far been limited to buying certificates for renewable energy, using power from wind farms or drafting plans for the use of solar panels to help power their stadiums.
In a billion-dollar business built around the virtues of competition, there is, of course, the worry that teams will jump on the green—or green image—bandwagon from narcissistic motivations of brand management without really doing the necessary work for arena and stadium sustainability. But this skeptical view of reality is still an improvement over today’s lack of conversation, or even consideration, regarding the environmental impact of spectator sports.
It isn’t cheap to meet the needs of 70,000 fans for over three hours every Sunday afternoon in autumn. But with their Go Green campaign, the Philadelphia Eagles are showing that, with a little effort, and a lot of cash up front, the carbon footprint cost to society can be far lower.
The renewable energy company Solar Blue “will maintain and operate the stadium’s power system for the next 20 years at a fixed percent annual price increase in electricity,” the Philadelphia franchise announced, “saving the Eagles an estimated $60 million in energy costs.
“The energy to be generated by on-site renewable sources is comparable to the annual electricity usage of 26,000 homes … [and] equates to removing the carbon emissions of 41,000 cars each year.”
The teams of the Pacific Northwest region are hoping to have a similar effect on their local environment.
“The Green Sports Alliance [GSA] was conceived and instituted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and representatives of Paul G. Allen’s sports teams in the fall of 2009,” reports SustainableBusiness.com. “Mr. Allen, a founder of Microsoft, owns the [NFL’s] Seattle Seahawks and [NBA’s] Portland Trailblazers and is co-owner of the [MLS’s] Seattle Sounders FC.”
In fact, the Green Sports Alliance has inroads in six professional leagues and two countries, with the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, MLB’s Seattle Mariners and the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks rounding out the list of partners pledging to curb their environmental impact.
“The GSA encourages all teams and venues to measure their environmental impacts and seek ways to reduce them,” reports SustainableBusiness.com. “Specifically, organizations are urged to initiate strategies that reduce energy and carbon emissions, conserve water, increase recycling, and promote renewable energy and alternative transportation policies.”
It’s too early to tell how successful the coalition will be on the sustainability front, but early results are encouraging. In 2006, according to Susan Darrington, vice-president of facility operations and services for Seattle’s Qwest Field, only 3.6 percent of all trash generated during Seahawks football games at the field were recycled. But by 2010, that amount had shot up to over 57 percent—a significant sum to be sure, even if it is only a small step toward societal sustainability.
“The Green Sports Alliance is not going to save the planet,” admits Alan Hershkowitz, who is nonetheless convinced that sports can be a key arena for environmentalism. “Eighteen percent [of Americans] say they pay attention to science of any kind, including environmental science. And yet 56 percent of Americans say they regularly pay attention to sports… The supply chain of sports engenders hundreds of billions of dollars of industrial activity. Professional sports consistently ranks among the single highest-watched TV shows in the world.”
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Simply put, the culture of sports, for better or worse, has an enormous effect on the culture at large.
“Sports is about the most sacred, deeply rooted, most important values, sentiments, and structures in the society,” contends Dr. Harry Edwards, sociologist, sports activist and organizer of the 1968 Olympic protests. “And if you can get to sports… you’re way up the road in terms of changing definitions of reality and the society as a whole.”
Maybe the environmental impact of those spiral wind turbines spinning in circles over Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field will have a greater impact than the barrels of oil they save. Maybe a focused environmental alliance of teams in several professional sports leagues can have a greater impact on carbon emissions than just recycling soda bottles.
That’s the hope, at least. As every sports fan knows, in the end, it’s all about how you play the game.
