All Your Base Are Belong to Us

Major League Baseball going, going, green!

Posted at 4:20 PM on 21 Jul 2008

Eco-friendliness has been seeping into pro baseball for a while, and now it's pretty much official: America's pastime has gone green. Major League Baseball partnered with NRDC at the start of the season to encourage teams to, um, win at sustainability. Head to a ball game near you, and chances are you'll toss your plastic beer cup into a recycling bin, gaze upon a solar-powered scoreboard, and pee in a no-flush urinal (sorry, men only). Scouts are traveling in fuel-efficient vehicles; stadiums are converting used cooking oil to biofuel; and teams are offsetting their carbon footprint. With 80 million spectators attending MLB games each year, the trend toward greenness is welcomed. "[T]his is signaling a cultural shift that I think is unprecedented, to have Major League Baseball embracing environmentalism," says NRDC's Allen Hershkowitz. "It's apple pie, it's motherhood, it's baseball, it's environmentalism."

source: The Washington Post

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Comments: (9 comments)

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Good Start

But if they really want to be green, they have to stop wasting massive amounts of electricity and causing more light pollution by playing night games.

by Wolverine at 8:25 PM on 21 Jul 2008

slow and steady mitigates green backlash

Stopping night games would make it so the only people who could go to games are those without 9-5 jobs! Anyway, the moment MLB does something that actually impacts the fans negatively, there will be a huge backlash against the green movement. From the looks of the article, they are doing a good job of integrating environmental features without enraging fans...always a good thing.

Green needs to go mainstream!

by Jensen at 9:01 AM on 22 Jul 2008

Backlash

If the only things that can be done for the environment are minimal ones to which no one will object, no significant environmental problems will ever be solved. This is a defeatist attitude. What needs to change is public attitudes toward the environment so that the public begins giving it the priority it deserves. We could begin by telling people how much electricity is wasted by using the lights for night games.

Re night games, gimme a break! When I was a kid in the '60s, very few games were played at night. There were no playoffs, but all World Series games were day games, and the teams played daytime doubleheaders every Sunday. Most people only go to a game or two per year, so this is really a non-issue; playing hooky from work or school is part of the fun of going to a game! Massive numbers of night games are relatively new, and all reasonable people would agree that it's more important to switch back to day games if doing so would help reduce global warming and other environmental harms.

by Wolverine at 9:21 AM on 22 Jul 2008

Wolverine, are you going to pay for it?

Because playing strictly day games will cost massive amounts of revenue. Why do you think baseball teams are playing at night now? Because they like the electric bills?

This is a typical environmentalist though. An industry announces the things they are going to do to become more environmentally friendly and instead of environmentalists applauding that, they say "it's not enough". And you know what, they will ALWAYS say that.

As soon as night games were gone, Wolverine would be decrying travel - teams used to take the train. Yeah, the Bosox are going to take the train from Boston to LA.

I can hear it already.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 10:27 AM on 22 Jul 2008
[ Parent ]

Mac Is Right About What I Would Complain About

Because this society is so environmentally toxic in every way, it is rotten to the core and must make fundamental changes. If it does not, it will continue to destroy life as we know it, which we're witnessing right now.

But Mac's comment points out a fundamental problem: people prioritize the wrong things. What's more important, playing a game commercially and making as much money as possible, or protecting the environment? The answer to this and similar questions determines whether you're really an environmentalist.

by Wolverine at 2:53 PM on 22 Jul 2008

baseball for the environment

how about every sports league going back to its original length of season (based on the weather outside). that means no baseball in october, no basketball or hockey in june and no football in february. shorten the playing seasons, save the planet.

by earlysnows at 4:12 AM on 24 Jul 2008

There's more...

Yes, MLB still does need to step up its efforts. However, the article only mentions some of the activities the organization has taken to " go green."

During All-Star Week, for example, they handed out reusable All-Star totes, which were made from 80% post-consumer recycled content, to fans. Also, they purchased carbon offsets for activities and shuttled fans to events on MTA clean air hybrid buses.

On an individual team level, the Pittsburgh Pirates launched a greening initiatives program which has been branded "Let's Go Bucs. Let's Go Green." The initiative, supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council, involves recycling, of course, and also has incorporated the use of biodegradable products in the team's stadium. In additon, the club will extend the program to public environmental education, through various ballpark signage, service announcements from Pirates players on the video board, postings on the official website, Pirates.com, and in its various publications.

Sources:
http://www.biobasednews.com/node/15943
http://www.biobasednews.com/node/13098

by acschwim at 11:44 AM on 24 Jul 2008

Earlysnows

I fully agree! Most people know longer know that football is supposed to be a fall sport, not a winter one. The season should be over by the end of December. But hey, gotta get all those teams so we can make more money! And too many teams means too long of a season.

I played a lot of baseball and football as a kid and love to watch as an adult. While pro sports have always been commercial, the level of commercialism has gotten so bad that I'm now constantly considering totally giving up watching. And make no mistake, increased night games and lengthened seasons are just more commercialization, done to make more money.

Everything is so commercial and plastic now: night games, indoor stadiums, artificial turf, changed rules to increase scoring that thereby dumb down the games, and the constant hawking of things -- announcers can barely open their mouths without whoring for some corporation or corporate sponsored event. It's bad enough that the stadiums almost all have corporate names, but even certain terms now have them, such as the Heil red zone in football (sorry, I won't advertise for the evil pigs responsible for this by writing the correct corporate name).

As Mac said, albeit not intentionally, it's all about making more money. Until humans as a whole stop prioritizing that and prioritize life instead, including all of the natural world and all other species, we're just going to get more of the same. Baseball and other sports can mitigate their harms by taking some of the actions described on this thread, but the harms they do far outweigh the mitigations.

by Wolverine at 1:01 PM on 24 Jul 2008

PRO OR CON

I dont think meetings pro sports, conf. business meetings or any gathering is condusive to a greener society and for that matter sunday church. the idea that personal identity is some how related to gathering together and using up uneeded resources is in my opinion a waste. mountain men (people) had a rendezvous once a year and that maybe to much now a days but hey thats just my way.

flying under the radar

by treestump at 2:04 PM on 24 Jul 2008

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