CieszkoTheMatrix2

 More Than Just Green Grass As one of the most influential institutions in society, professional sports have had an everlasting impact on its followers ever since their conception. The magical draw of a late October playoff baseball game under the lights, the excitement of thousands of fans tailgating before a crisp cool day of football, and the reverberating roar as a three-pointer is drained at the buzzer to win the game are all a part of the fan experience when attending one of these sporting events. However, behind the scenes, almost oblivious to everyone in attendance, lie countless environmentally detrimental operations. Amid the towering banks of buzzing lights which surround most professional sports stadiums, sit thousands of fans unaware to the extreme pressure that the game they are watching is putting on the environment. As a single spectator surrounded by thousands of other excited people can still hear the energy consumptive buzzing of these towers above all other noise. For example, in an average football stadium which seats approximately 78,000 fans, the lights alone will “consume about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity” on a game day. Roughly half of our electricity in the United States comes from coal power and therefore “each kilowatt hour of electricity produces an average of 1.55 pounds of carbon dioxide.” Although this number seems preposterous, football games are infrequent, played once a week 8 times a year per stadium, compared to sports such as baseball that plays an 81 game regular season per stadium. Therefore you can imagine that this number is exacerbated when applied to baseball. Keeping a sports stadium and its playing surface in top condition requires constant and vigilant attention. For the average stadium with natural grass, over $35,000 a year is spent on fertilizers alone to help the grass grow weed-free and a beautiful shade of green. Because these fertilizers are used to expedite the growth of the field, it also must be mowed. Spartan stadium at Michigan State University, a medium sized football field with a below average sized stadium, must be mowed three times per week, and over the course of a season consumes over 300 gallons of gasoline. An average stadium will also use over 4 million gallons of water per season on watering the field alone. Attending one of these events is never complete without the fabled Dodger Dog, or old time bratwurst, not to mention the necessary beer in hand, however this seemingly innocent act is just as detrimental to the environment as any of the other arguments mentioned. In fact, single use packaging such as that used for hot dogs, French fries, sodas, and beer comprise, on average, over 1400 tons of trash collected at a Safeco Field in Seattle each season. In fact, the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball organization announced that “none of the 760,000 bottles and cans used at PNC Park in 2007 were recycled.” Aside from direct consumer products, and through my own research for my senior thesis, I have discovered another single use packaging problem that arises in baseball. Each season, Major League baseball will go through approximately 160,000 baseballs, which come packaged in boxes of a dozen. Therefore approximately 13,333 boxes of balls are used each season; each box requires a little more than 4.3125 sq. ft. of cardboard. This means that in Major League Baseball, 57,498.5 sq. ft. of cardboard is wasted each year on packaging for baseballs alone. Although measures are now being implemented in some professional stadiums to help reduce the carbon footprint that they leave on the environment (mostly in baseball), much more must be done. As a staple in our society, professional sports will always be in the spotlight and any advertised change in sustainable habits could drastically alter our habits as consumers.

"Baseball's Greenest Stadium - Newsweek." //Newsweek - National News, World News, Business, Health, Technology, Entertainment, and More - Newsweek//. Web. 2 Nov. 2010. . "Football Footprint." //Knight Center for Environmental Journalism//. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. . "Twins' New Stadium to Cut Water Use in Half." //TreeHugger//. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. .