Smarter Business: Smart Design

Photo: Gregory Luke Smith

Certain things are essential at a ball game. Killer seats are good, but a cold beverage is just as important. And when a drink's in one hand, peanuts better be in the other. You also need flashing score boards, loud speakers, and at least 15,000 other people. Anything less and baseball just doesn't feel like baseball.

And yet, all those bright lights, peanuts and crackerjacks can add up to an environmentally hefty pastime, and stadiums around the country are looking for ways to conserve. Stepping up the game this season, Safeco Field, home to the Mariners, in Seattle, Washington has nearly eliminated game-day garbage, saving 131,600 pounds of carbon dioxide each month during baseball season. The best part is, the fans haven't given up a thing.

Conservation Culture at Safeco

Safeco has been actively greening its operations since 2006 when the organization began an education campaign among the 2,000 people who work in the building each game day. "I like to say 'Do at work what you do at home when you're paying the bill,'" says Scott Jenkins, manager of ballpark operations at Safeco. "Within the first six months of our efforts, we saved $100,000 in utilities between gas and electric" as staff and concessions mastered the habit of turning off lights and equipment and closing the massive overhead doors behind them.

The savings didn't stop then, as the company began investing in stadium retrofits including weather-stripping doors and installing low-flow urinals and faucet aerators--cutting costs by close to $300,000 the first year. Between 2006 and 2009, "we nearly saved a million dollars in utilities just by using automation, by instilling a culture of conservation, and by getting everybody to do what you'd do at home--but do it here at work," says Jenkins.

But when it came to recycling, the waste diversion rates were only steadily getting better each year, up 7 percent in 2009 from 31 percent the year before and 25 percent the year before that. Though enlisting the support of 2000 stadium workers to cut back on energy proved reasonable, getting 45,000 fans to recycle was more of a challenge. What has proved much easier, apparently, is getting them to compost.

"It's Not Garbage Anymore"

Jenkins says he doesn't mind digging in the trash, which is exactly what he did last year while looking into the modest improvement in recycling numbers. "When you looked into the garbage cans in the concourse, there was some plastic, some garbage, and a lot of compost." Safeco's back of the house operations had been composting for several years at that point, but sorting 500 garbage cans from the concourse after each game requires a lot of labor. "That's when we thought," explains Jenkins, "if we can just manage the supply side of this, we can pretty much eliminate garbage and turn our waste stream into a compost stream."

During the recent off-season, Safeco worked with its concessionaire, Centerplate, to switch all service ware--even utensils, plastic cups and lids--to a compostable product. Now every beer cup, hot dog wrapper and nachos plate is compost ready. Even the peanuts package is made of compostable paper, and Jenkins has re-labeled all garbage cans "compost." The only other receptacle nearby is a beverage bottle-shaped container for plastic beverage bottles. "It's either PET or compost," says Jenkins. "So the fan's behavior doesn't have to change. Last year's garbage is this year's compost."

Of course, some garbage is still garbage. For this, there's a garbage can at each of the 17 "Zero Waste Stations" around the 1.1 million square feet stadium. Some trash does wind up in the compost, like condiment packaging and products from outside the stadium, but the percentage of these items in the stadium's compost stream is so small that Cedar Grove Organics Recycling, the city of Seattle's yard waste management company, is voluntarily pulling them from the stream after collection.

They're also taking notes and pictures for each Safeco load they bring in--around 70 tons a month--and relaying the info back to the team, says Stephan Banchero, general manager of Cedar Grove. "We have seen them get progressively better," he says. "Frankly, it has gone extremely well." And Safeco is now hovering around an 82 percent waste diversion rate.

Getting Good at It

Success is owed, in part, to the Safeco Green Team, a rotating cast of twelve employees designated each game to walk the concourse and monitor the program in action. The Green Team ensures that containers are in place, that concessions are properly equipped, and that employees understand the program. "It helps us span out across the building and monitor how we're doing," says Jenkins. Green Team members report back on performance at the end of the night.

Jenkins expects the diversion rate to be 85 percent or more by the end of the season, and hopes to up the composting even more with efforts to educate the fans, including point-of-sale messaging and the new mascot Kid Compost. "And, because we have so little garbage now, we're talking about sorting the garbage," says Jenkins, which could up their percentage another four or five points. "When we said striving for zero waste I was a little sheepish," he says, "because I didn't really think we'd get there. But seeing how we've done so far, we're really not that far away"

last revised 1/31/2012