Some are motivated by a desire to save the planet. Others see it as good PR, or as a way to save money. Often, it’s a combination of the three.
The new Nationals stadium takes going green to another level. The D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission plans to make the ballpark the first major pro sports venue in the country to earn LEED certification — which means it
has to accumulate at least 26 points on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design scorecard compiled by the U.S. Green Building Council. The Minnesota Twins’ new park, projected to open in 2010, also is expected to be certified green.
“We’re the nation’s capital, where policies are set, laws are set, and it seems like it’s appropriate for the new ballpark in the nation’s capital to be the forerunner, to be the one who sets that bar,” commission chief executive officer Allen Y. Lew said.
During a recent tour of the Nationals’ construction site, project manager Naeemi beamed about his five sand filters — huge underground bunkers that will purify water from the ballpark before it trickles into the troubled Anacostia.
The ballpark also will have low-flow plumbing fixtures that will save an estimated 3.6 million gallons of water per year. The construction materials will have a minimum of 10 percent recycled content. An education program will encourage fans to recycle their trash. High-efficiency field lighting will use roughly 21 percent less energy than the lights at a typical ballpark. A subway station is about a block away, which means fewer people will drive to the games. There are plans to plant vegetation on a portion of the roof to keep it cooler.
And it’s all affordable. The green upgrades account for less than 1 percent of the $611 million ballpark budget.
“There are a lot of myths out there about green building costing a whole lot more,” said Gwyn Jones of the local chapter of the Sierra Club, which has supported the project. “We didn’t want the myths and the perceptions out there to detract from the goal, which was to make the stadium green.”
The NFL spent even less making the Super Bowl green. The league salvaged unused supplies, recycled tons of materials, planned its Super Bowl trees and more — all on a budget of $2,500 because the league found local partners willing to chip in.
“This is the biggest single sporting event in the world every year,” Groh said. “If we can find a way to make our event carbon-neutral and do it for 2,500 bucks, there goes the excuse for other people who say, ‘Well, we would do this if it didn’t cost so much money.’”

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The NFL’s first serious attempt at a green Super Bowl did not go well.
“All we did was recycle, and it was a disaster,” said Groh.
The year was 1994, when many special events paid little attention to recycling. The venue was the Georgia Dome. Groh, in his first year consulting with the league, found some volunteers and went about the task the hard way.
“What we eventually decided on was taking all the bags of trash from the stadium, bringing them down to the loading dock, breaking them open, and then hand picking all the cans and the bottles out of this really disgusting and miserable garbage,” Groh said. “It was awful. It was inefficient. It was costly. It was time consuming. It was messy and dirty, and it didn’t yield enough of a return to make it worthwhile.”
The following year, the NFL came up with mission statement: Make the Super Bowl greener, but do it using the same
type of sound business practices that have helped make the game itself so popular.
As a result, the biggest of the big games has become more environmentally friendly with each passing year. The Indianapolis Colts’ victory over the Chicago Bears in Miami in January will be remembered by many as the first rainy Super Bowl, but Groh has another adjective for it: carbon-neutral.
“Everybody and their uncle is starting to talk about being carbon-neutral and carbon mitigation,” Groh said. “Five years ago, before Al Gore was doing his power-point presentation, we already were trying to address
it.”
The NFL’s list of eco-friendly measures from this year’s Super Bowl is long and impressive — and surprisingly cost-effective:
-- Leftover food. Up to 60,000 pounds of extra food was left over from all the banquets, parties and luncheons.
These weren’t leftovers in the traditional sense — this was prepared food that was cooked in kitchens, but never made it out to the serving tables. The NFL distributed the food to soup kitchens, shelters, churches and other organizations.
“If you don’t recover it, it turns into 30 tons of garbage,” Groh said.
-- Leftover stuff. Miami was decorated with 5 miles of fabric in the form of steamers, banners and other
decorations. The league could have filled a tractor-trailer or two — and a lot of landfill space — with its leftover office supplies, building materials and various things bearing the Super Bowl logo.
“Everything that could be salvaged, we would salvage it,” Groh said. “Inventory it, and distribute it primarily to local
non-profits.”
-- Recycling. The NFL recycled dozens of tons of cardboard at the stadium. (Drinks were served in plastic souvenir cups, so most people took them home.) Aluminum, plastic, glass and mounds of paper were recycled at the media center, where some 3,500 reporters sifted through a week’s worth of news releases. Tons of wood was recycled from the NFL Experience theme park.
-- Negating greenhouse gases: Two years ago, the NFL went to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to
find out how much carbon dioxide had been spewed into the atmosphere because of the Super Bowl in Jacksonville.
The answer wasn’t as bad as the league thought. For example, the ships used for temporary hotels didn’t count — they would have been pumping greenhouse gases on cruises elsewhere if not at the Super Bowl.
Still, the lab said that the NFL’s fleet of 2,000 vehicles and the electricity at the stadium helped contribute to a final tally of 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide.
“They said in the big scheme of things, that’s not a lot of greenhouse gas,” Groh said. “But you guys made it, you guys are responsible for it.”
To make up for its mess, the NFL is planting 3,000 trees in the Miami area, mostly in large groups to maximize the
carbon-negating effect. The most notable project is planned for next month, when 500 native species trees are to be planted to help reclaim the Dinner Key Spoil Islands near Miami.

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Groh would like to see more teams involved in the greening movement. The NFL, NBA, NHL and major league baseball mandate dress codes and all sorts of rules, but they leave it up to individual teams when it comes to environmental policy.
Lurie said the Eagles are planning round-table sessions at NFL meetings to share what they’ve learned. After all, there’s a huge potential audience of worshipping fans eager to listen whenever their favorite team speaks — whether it’s trash-talking or just talking trash.
“We can educate — that’s definitely a role we can engage in,” Lurie said. “Because our children and their future are our responsibility. Not just us the Eagles, but the royal ‘us.’ We can provide a unique platform from which to model civic behavior.”

For more information:
The Washington Nationals ballpark: http://www.washdcsports.com/newballpark/projects.html
Philadelphia Eagles “Go Green” initiative: http://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/gogreen/gogreen.jsp?id=34329
A Forbes.com story about the Super Bowl XLI Environmental Program: http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/19/super-bowl-green-sports-biz-cz_ad_0119green.html
U.S. Green Building Council: https://www.usgbc.org
EPA “Green Venues” program: http://www.epa.gov/region09/waste/greenvenues
The Great Lake Loons solar heating plan: http://www.ourmidland.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17570557&BRD=2289&PAG=461&dept_id=576269&rfi=6