It’s Summer Spruce-Up Week!

You might be overwhelmed re-doing your bedroom or cleaning out your closet…. Imagine sprucing up an entire ballpark!!

Scott Jenkins of the Seattle Mariners

That’s exactly what Scott Jenkins set out to do at the Seattle Mariners stadium, Safeco Field.

“I got here five years ago and we only recycled 12% of the trash. I said, we’ve gotta do better than that. Now it’s up over 80%!”

HOW did this happen? In a word: Compost. No surprise there…. after all, Compost Kitchen Food Waste is worth a whopping 100 points on Practically Green — and Use Compostable Partyware is another effective action.

“We looked at all the trash and we said, what if all of this were compostable? For Earth Day 2009, we said Let’s try zero-waste.”

Major League Options: Compost, Recycle, or Toss

Scott and his team worked with the concessionaire to get compostable service-ware: plates, utensils, straws, cups, even hot dog boats. They launched a kitchen compost program. “We repurposed our garbage cans and now we have 17 zero-waste stations and 500 compost containers! We’ve saved nearly one million pounds of compostable material from the landfill.”

Mariners Mascots "Kid Compost" and "Captain Plastic"

“We work with Cedar Grove Composting here in Seattle – we’re their favorite customer. On Earth Day this year we gave out bags of the compost bagged as Safeco Field Soil and the fans are pretty amazed: It’s not garbage any more!!”

Watch fans react as the Mariners handed out 5,000 bags of compost: http://www.king5.com/news/local/5000-Mariners-fans-leave-Safeco-Field-with-soil-120182309.html

Note: Cedar Grove’s website includes a zippy compost calculator: enter the dimensions of your garden and it tells you how many bags you’ll need!

“On the energy front: we took a look at our natural gas and electric bills, and we set a goal for 10% savings. I challenged my team, and in 6 months we’d saved $274,000. We’ve saved $1.2 million over a 4-year period. It’s ALL low-cost stuff like shutting equipment off when it’s not being used, using aerators on faucets, window-stripping the doors. Lots of this energy waste is invisible. It’s leaving the fridge doors open, doors ajar, lights on. And now we’ve invested in energy conservation: improved our HVAC system, lighting retrofits, and we refit urinals to low-flow.”

“Sports provides an exciting opportunity to change behavior because you’re reaching the public when they’re having fun at an outing,” Scott told us. “When I saw Practically Green I said BINGO! This is a great way to engage people.”

The Mariners are founding members of the Green Sports Alliance, a spanking new non-profit organization that hopes to influence all leagues, all sports.

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