Sports Rally Around Green Projects
The sports industry — from teams to leagues to stadium and track operators — is becoming more environmentally friendly.
AMERICAN sports are often an exercise in excess: fans consume large quantities of beer and hot dogs, stadiums with giant scoreboards and retractable roofs are surrounded by parking lots filled with thousands of cars. In many ways, they represent the broadest cross-section of consumer culture and America’s wasteful ways.
But the sports industry — from teams to leagues to stadium and track operators — is becoming more environmentally friendly. In just the last few years, several new arenas have been certified by the United States Green Building Council, and nearly a dozen other facilities have added solar panels. Teams like Seattle and St. Louis have ambitious energy-saving programs at their parks, and the United States Open tennis tournament composts a majority of its waste. Even Nascar, a sport built on gas-guzzling racecars, has introduced a program that includes the recycling of used tires, oily rags and more.
