SHARE

Over the years, sports have become the main source of entertainment for people, which is why the number of fans grew significantly. Since the fan base of professional sports is growing over the years, so is their impact on the planet.

Professional teams are working hard to lower their carbon footprint and they are using their popularity to influence other people to join their journey of making the planet a better place for all of us.

This proves that sports are more than just about winning a match or league. They have greater responsibilities and are here to set an example that everyone should follow.

Fortunately, many eco-friendly sports teams are on a green mission lead by innovation and their goal of promoting sustainability. In today’s article, we will cover some of the most eco-friendly sports teams that are making a change.

Pittsburg Pirates

The popular Baseball team made some changes towards sustainability and their recent recycling campaign was very successful. They managed to divert more than 65% of their waste from plastic to paper and recycle all the materials.

This sparked a chain reaction that was quickly adopted by the entire city of Pittsburg. They claim that they’ve recycled enough bottles to stretch from PNC Park to Yankee Stadium, and back!

Sacramento Kings

Sacramento Kings is one of the revolutionary teams that used innovative technology to make them more sustainable. Their fight for climate change is shown with their impressive LEED Platinum arena the Golden 1 Credit Union Center. This is the first premium LEED arena in the world and received other awards by the U.S Green Building Council.

The arena attracts more than 1.6 million new visitors each year, and making the arena more sustainable significantly lowers the impact on the planet.

This is the first arena that derives 100% of its electricity from solar energy sourced within 50 miles of the arena.

Hopefully, this will inspire other teams to try and renovate their stadiums and make them more eco-friendly.

Philadelphia Eagles

The NFL franchises are not falling back when it comes to green stadiums. The Lincoln Financial Field, home to the Philadelphia Eagles, one of the top NFL teams according to the TwinSpires Edge, finds itself on the map of the most sustainable stadiums in the world.

The parking lots are covered with 11,000 solar panels, as well as, 14 industrial-size wind turbines that decorate the roof. This produces six times more electricity than the Eagles need for a home game.

Additionally, they are committed to reducing waste and less than 1% ends up in landfills and most of it is biodegradable.

Ohio Buckeyes

It is nice to see that even college teams are starting to participate in this eco-movement by making drastic changes in their operations. Ohio Buckeyes is a US college football team that started a “zero waste” program back in 2011, and 90% of the waste is already diverted to recycling.

The training center and arena are covered with solar panels and they generate 21% of the energy from the wind. They hope to achieve total carbon neutrality by 2050, but as things move on, we expect this to happen much quicker.

Forest Green Rovers

Forest Green Rovers, or otherwise known as the “little club on the hill” started making headlines in the English Football League after promoting eco-friendly principles. They made some drastic changes towards sustainability and they claim to be the world’s first 100% vegan football club.

So, all the milk-based products are replaced with soy and oat milk, and hamburgers are replaced with veggie burgers. Their goal is to limit animal meat production, which will drastically lower carbon emissions.

They also invested a lot of money in renewable energy by installing solar and wind turbines on their stadium and training center. Plus, they have plans to build a stadium entirely made of wood, as the most eco-friendly material.

Atlanta Falcons

Have you seen the Atlanta Falcons not-so-new stadium? It looks like it is made out of a comic book with its unique shape and design. But that’s is not why we are here for. The so-called Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened back in 2017 and with the construction cost of $1.6 billion, this is the most environmentally friendly stadium in the league.

The stadium has solar panels that will help to offset its energy consumption, but the most impressive thing is the rainwater collection system which can store thousands of gallons of water that is used for internal cooling, irrigation on the field, and emergency water in case of disaster.

Rachel Sterry