NewWays for Environmental and Social Change

Major League Baseball has teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council to create a Team Greening Program.  There is a new website setup where you can get information for each team on the steps they are taking to improve their environmental practices.  Sure, a lot of the information is just replicated from team-to-team, but its a great step towards progress.

via screamtobegreen.com

The NRDC Team Greening Advisor for Major League Baseball will work with each individual club on a host of topics, including:
• Adopting an official environmental policy
• Incorporating environmental language into contracts, purchasing policies and requests for proposals that specify preferences for environmentally sound products and services
• Encouraging the use of renewable energy
• Providing information about how to credibly offset the carbon emissions related to team and fan transportation
• Using post-consumer recycled content paper for all paper products
• Implementing paper reduction strategies in offices
• Offsetting the environmental impact of up to half of team and employee travel
• Establishing club eco-committees

The information in the guide setup by MLB and the NRDC is very thorough.   I do have to tell you that this is a guide and not a mandate.  Who knows what kind of pressure they are under to follow through with the recommendation. My first thoughts of baseball and the environment is the amount of water use and pesticides/fertilizers used on the fields.  This is covered.   They provide the teams with sample language for contracts with their vendors.  They suggest that they use a vendor who is certified under the Green Shield Certified Program.  They go on to provide all kinds of pertinent information including external links to the EPA and various informational sites.

The sections of the guide include: air, water, waste, paper, energy, transportation, vendors, renovations, and travel.  To be honest with you, it seems to be a very valuable resource to any business trying to improve their environmental footprint.  Take a gander and enjoy!

My final take-away is that I am happy to have baseball taking this initiative.  I can only hope that they promote the hell out of it.  If you put a bunch of men in a room who don’t know each other, what do they talk about?  Sports.  Sports is very influential…the major sports almost have as much power as Oprah.  So we’ve talked about the NFL and MLB.   Look for more from the NBA, NHL, and NASCAR in the near future.