6 pro teams announce Green Sports Alliance

Six professional sports teams from the Pacific Northwest on Monday announced the formation of a nonprofit organization intended to reduce the environmental impacts of pro teams.

Participants in the Green Sports Alliance include the Seattle Mariners, Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle Storm, Portland Trail Blazers and Vancouver Canucks in cooperation with their venues.

"We encourage all professional sports to join us," executive director Martin Tull said. "We will assist in measuring results and identifying strategies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, conserve water, increase recycling, promote alternative transportation policies and promote the use of renewable energy."

The Green Sports Alliance has received endorsements from the commissioners of each of the respective sports leagues as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

The inspiration for the group came from a collaboration between the Natural Resources Defense Council and representatives of Paul G. Allen, owner of the Seahawks, Trail Blazers and part-owner of the Sounders FC, in the fall of 2009.

The alliance, based out of Portland, Ore., hopes to use sports as a platform to reach out to fans and businesses about the need for conservation and waste reduction.

The group also announced plans for its inaugural Green Sports Alliance summit to be held in Portland on Aug. 1-3.

Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the alliance will use the cultural and market appeal of sports to advance environmental objectives.

"Eighteen percent of Americans say they pay attention to science of any kind at all, including environmental science, and yet 56 percent of Americans say they regularly pay attention to sports," Hershkowitz said. "If you want to change the world, you don't emphasize how different you are from everybody else, you go to where Americans are at and that's why this initiative is so meaningful."

Representatives from each of the franchises talked about their green initiatives and their attempts to consolidate waste from their venues.

The Mariners said they have increased their recycling rate to over 70 percent of all disposed materials, reduced natural gas use by 60 percent, electricity by 30 percent and water usage by 15 percent since 2006.

Safeco Field also has the lowest "energy intensity" of all major league ballparks that participate in the EPA's Energy Star program.

"It's not just an environmental initiative. It's a business initiative that greens your bottom line and greens the environment so they really go hand in hand," said Scott Jenkins, Mariners vice president of ballpark operations.

"We want more members. This is not just a Northwest-based alliance. Whether it's NASCAR, whether it's college sports, high school sports, club sports, ultimately the power of the Green Sports Alliance, I think, is huge."