How Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena achieved zero-waste status

A single major sports event can generate up to 40 tons of trash. That’s the weight of two loaded charter buses being added to a landfill — and that waste doesn’t even take into account the energy used to power the stadium, or the gasoline-fueled cars so many fans drove to get there.

That’s why Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena — the first large-scale live events space named for a cause, not for a company — is leading the way on a greener alternative with a host of initiatives around energy, waste, transit, and beyond. In fact, Climate Pledge Arena and its resident teams, the Seattle Kraken and the Seattle Storm, are among the signatories of The Climate Pledge, a coalition of companies that are committed to reaching an ambitious goal: achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. This September marks the fifth anniversary of the Pledge, which was co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019. Over 500 signatory companies have signed on since.

As the growing movement to fight climate change focuses around the need for massive, cross-industry collaboration, signatories in the entertainment and sports industries are coming together to address their environmental impact collectively. In the case of Climate Pledge Arena, that means devising innovative solutions to make the future of live events more sustainable.

Oak View Group, which operates Climate Pledge Arena and 400 other venues worldwide is also a signatory of the Pledge. Kristen Fulmer, head of sustainability for Oak View Group, says the arena’s environmental achievements also have a broader impact: helping inspire other signatories and venues globally. Fulmer also serves as director of GOAL, or Green Operations & Advanced Leadership, Oak View Group’s sustainability working group that pulls together leaders from 40 event spaces in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. 

“Sustainability doesn’t just show up in [new] venues,” Fulmer said. “We’re pushing out goals and minimum standards to all of our venue operations teams, and providing them with support and resources to make sure that they know what sustainability looks like for the Iowa Events Center just as much as it does [for] the Climate Pledge Arena.”

Creating a green road map

Motivating live events spaces around the world to embrace sustainable practices could have an enormous impact. Each year, the global sports industry emits an estimated 350 million tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Carbon Literacy Project, a figure that includes factors like transportation emissions, construction of venues, and the supply chain for merchandise. Concert goers, meanwhile, are responsible for over 116 million pounds of waste in the U.S. alone. 

Climate Pledge Arena’s success story demonstrates some of the tangible actions that Pledge signatories can take, starting with energy. Everything in the arena, from the heat that warms attendees to the machines that resurface the hockey rink ice, runs on electric power. Currently, one percent of that power is provided by on-site solar panels, and the rest comes from other renewable sources, according to Rob Johnson, senior vice president of sustainability and transportation for the Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken.

Siemens, a fellow Climate Pledge signatory, has been helping with further energy-reduction methods for the 18,100-seat arena, “starting with tracking and sub-metering to understand exactly where the building energy systems are using the most power, and what we can really do to reduce those emissions,” Johnson said.

“To see the number of venues … jumping on calls to ask questions about how we’re doing it has been powerful.”

And the environmental sustainability initiatives go beyond traditional “green” building operations. The arena also offers free local public transit with every ticket to encourage fans to choose options like light rail or the bus over driving to events. Rainwater collected from all those rainy Seattle days is even used to make the hockey rink’s ice, which Johnson said has already saved more than 400,000 gallons of water over the past three seasons. The food program prioritizes local sourcing, with a goal to source 75 percent of ingredients from within a 300-mile radius of the arena.

Plus, its 22,000-ton roof (which was built for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and has official historical landmark designation) was preserved while the new arena was built under it. That significantly reduced the 41,000 metric tons of carbon emissions associated with construction, according to Johnson. 

The arena’s approach is inspiring groups worldwide — from Eastern European hockey clubs to Japanese arena developers — who regularly request more info about its initiatives, Johnson said. “To see the number of venues who … are asking us for tours or jumping on calls to ask questions about how we’re doing it has been powerful,” he said.

Getting to zero-waste

One of Climate Pledge Arena’s most talked-about recent achievements has been its TRUE Platinum certification for operating as a functionally zero-waste facility. To achieve that, the venue diverts more than 90 percent of its waste from the landfill to recycling and compost.

Hitting that zero-waste target took a three-pronged approach, said Brianna Treat, director of sustainability for the arena and the Seattle Kraken. The first step was simplifying procurement, which involved shifting the products for sale. Only products with compostable food contents and recyclable packaging can now be purchased. Single-use plastics have also been eliminated. The Arena achieved this milestone in October 2023, well ahead of the 2024 goal.

“Even just small, incremental changes can really help reduce big numbers.”

Finally, the team overhauled how the cleaning staff does the “bowl sweep” to collect trash after events. Instead of having crews collect all items in one bag and then sort them later into separate bags for landfill, recycling, and compost, the cleaners started sorting as they did the bowl sweep. “We saved so much time that we actually went from needing 10 housekeepers to four to six every event just because of that very simple approach to our operations,” Treat said. “The bowl sweep was huge for us, because it saved us money on the back-of-house front, but it also saved us a lot of time on the sorting front. It takes 10 hours to sort through 10 tons of waste.

Then, there was fan education. Signs at each disposal station, for instance, show the 30 most-sold items in the stadium and specify where each should be tossed so there’s no guessing. The team has even strapped a camera to a soda bottle to show where it goes after being binned.

Climate Pledge Arena’s zero-waste performance is well beyond the average landfill diversion rate for GOAL network members (90 percent vs. 32 percent). But to Fulmer, it’s more about appreciating the overall progress. “That’s over one-third of their waste not going to landfill or being incinerated,” she said. “If we total that up across the number of events that these venues host and then across the whole portfolio, that’s substantial. Even just small, incremental changes can really help reduce big numbers.”