More arenas and stadiums across the U.S. are putting environmentally-friendly practices at the forefront.
Another recent trend spreading across sports has many hoping it will also follow suit: arenas and stadiums not only adopting sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, but putting those efforts front and center for fans, players, musicians, and anyone else who enters the building. "Venue operators are relatively quickly understanding their opportunities and their responsibilities as it related to operating more sustainability," said Chris Granger, CEO of OVG360, a management company that works with more than 300 venues across the world ranging from arenas and stadiums to amphitheaters and performing arts centers.
That quickly evolved into making an arena that could be a"beacon of a sustainability district," Johnson said, which helped attract the attention of Amazon, who in 2019 co-founded the Climate Pledge initiative to have companies, organizations, and partners work together to address the climate crisis and solve the challenges around decarbonizing.
That has led to a focus on getting to zero-waste status, which the stadium first achieved in 2020 for an Atlanta United match, Cannon said. After an investment of about $1 million to retrofit the building and put in other measures to achieve that zero-waste consistently, the stadium has now reached that goal.
"Everyone understands that the environment is our number one global challenge. It's reached a level of critical mass where people have moved past greenwashing, and they're making substantive changes to their business practices," Cannon said.
Kristen Fulmer, senior director of sustainability at OVG360 parent company Oak View Group, said while it's clear that"sustainability can be a good business," there still can be confusion about what that really means.