Team Green
Could America's sports teams change the way we think about sustainability? That's the idea behind the Green Sports Alliance, an organization co-founded in March 2011 by NRDC and representatives from six professional sports leagues to rally teams, arenas, corporate sponsors, and fans to adopt pro-environmental practices on and off the field.
The alliance now includes 13 leagues and more than 40 teams and venues. Teams from Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and the National Basketball Association have worked with NRDC and the EPA to monitor energy and water use, waste generation, recycling, and paper procurement. Eleven LEED-certified facilities have been developed, including Sun Life Stadium in Miami, the first LEED Silver retractable-dome stadium, which is due to open this year.
The impact of the U.S. sports industry is huge, culturally and economically, with a supply chain that touches industries from paper and food to chemicals and textiles, says Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at NRDC who helped launch the campaign. "We're trying to inspire a cultural shift among the hundreds of millions of people who regularly pay attention to sports and get them to think favorably about environmentalism."
