New Baseball Venues Thinking Green

Posted on June 15, 2010
Filed Under Green Sports |

By Charlie Fisher

Baseball has been known as America’s pastime since long before I was born. Though not everyone is a fan of the sport by any means, it is undeniable that professional baseball is an enormously profitable business. With their lucrative TV contracts, widespread ticket and merchandise sales, as well as marketing and advertising power, Major League Baseball teams certainly have a little more extra spending money than the rest of us.

Knowing this, it is reassuring to know that some professional baseball organizations are at least beginning to use their significant national presence to promote environmental consciousness.

target-field-exterior-minnesota-twins-stadium1

Besides just promoting ideas, two teams in particular are going a step further and taking action. Both the Minnesota Twins and the Washington Nationals have newly built home stadiums and both earned LEED-Silver Certification, with Target Field (Minnesota) scoring 36 LEED points and Nationals Park (D.C.) scoring 34. Target Field has several impressive green aspects, including a giant cistern - a tank for collecting water - buried underneath the warning track, low-flow urinals and toilets, and high-efficiency field and interior lighting. Ballpark managers estimate that over a 3-game home stand in Minnesota, approximately 400 cubic yards of material is recycled in the stadium instead of going straight to landfills.

There are an immeasurable amount of benefits that come from these popular and widely followed organizations shifting their behaviors to thinking about the environment and their effect on it. Since these humongous venues are built to hold tens of thousands of people, the amount of energy and natural resources saved in their construction and everyday use are relatively equal. Besides the obvious and immediate positive affect these green stadiums are having, they also serve as educational avenues for people who don’t have extensive knowledge about their environmental impact. After all if Joe Mauer and the Minnesota Twins are going green, then what are you waiting for?

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1 Comment so far
  1. Brandon June 17, 2010 11:09 am

    I’m proud to comment that my Philadelphia Phillies were the first MLB team to join EPA’s Green Power Partnership. In 2008 they launched the “Red Goes Green” program, leading the way in clean energy movement in professional sports.

    Oh Philly, what a great city..

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