Over the past couple weeks our little family has done an awful lot of traveling far and wide to visit with family and friends. Last weekend we spent a few days with one of Matt’s best friends, Dan, who lives in the Washington D.C. area, and since all of us are big baseball fans he started looking into getting tickets so we could enjoy a game while in town.The Baltimore Orioles were on the road so we landed at Nationals Park, home of the Washington Nationals. Before we even got to DC, Dan had sent me a link to some information on the park and it turns out the ball park is one of the most environmentally conscious in the country! I was excited to have a first hand look at their efforts.
Construction on the structure was completed in time for the start of the 2008 season and it is the very first LEED Silver Certified professional sporting venue in the country so the two year project was quite a big deal!
Some of the efforts completed include:
- Location chosen to be accessible by the Metro (public transportation)
- Low VOC materials
- Materials consist of a minimum 10% recycled content
- LED lights used in scoreboard/electronic banner displays
- Massive reductions in water and energy consumption (3.6 million gallons annually / 21% over standard field lighting)
- Drought resistant plantings
- Reflective roofing materials
- Locally produced materials specified in construction
- Over 5,500 tons of waste was recycled upon completion of the project
We had a blast at the park, which is also one of the cleanest facilities I’ve ever been to! Here are a few photos I took the day we watched the Nats beat the Florida Marlins.
Thanks for blazing the trail toward a Greener way of thinking, Washington Nationals, while still allowing us to have a truly enjoyable baseball experience!