Carrot tops are turned into gremolata, a condiment. Watermelons are served as vegan sashimi, and their rinds are pickled and used in salads. De Mers also chooses foods that can be prepared in multiple ways. The local buying means avoiding foods like avocados from Mexico. “Because obviously costs rise when you start incorporating that.” When sustainability is weighed against profit and loss, “that’s where it gets tricky,” De Mers said. Molly De Mers, an executive chef for Delaware North, a hospitality company that runs food service operations at the building, said three-quarters of the food used at the arena comes from farms and ranches within a 300-mile radius of Seattle. Tracking the emissions of vendors is more difficult because their carbon footprint varies widely. So will the emissions from charter flights that the Kraken and visiting teams take to and from Seattle. Their carbon emissions will be added to the building’s tally. Surveys will help determine whether fans arrive in gas-powered or electric cars, or take buses, light rail, the monorail and other public transportation - which they can ride for free by showing their Kraken or concert tickets. The biggest challenge is calculating the emissions produced at the building, as well as those produced by fans who travel to the arena and every vendor that delivers products. A cistern was built to hold 15,000 gallons of rainwater drained from the roof that would then be distributed by electric Zambonis to resurface the ice. Air-conditioning equipment, solar panels and other machinery that might normally be put on the roof were placed elsewhere on the property. Their biggest challenge was figuring out how to upgrade an arena built for the 1962 World’s Fair with a roof and windows that are landmarks, along with the nearby Space Needle and the monorail to downtown.Īfter groundbreaking in December 2018, the 44-million-pound steel roof was perched on 72 stilts so the entire arena beneath it could be gutted. Leiweke and the Kraken’s principal owner, David Bonderman, who with his partners owns the other 49 percent of the building, did not start out trying to build the country’s greenest arena. The challenge is, how do we get others to follow?” “We have an urgent need to act and business as usual is not going to cut it. “People over the years have used LEED to guide them, but that only takes you so far,” said Scott Jenkins, a co-founder of the Green Sports Alliance. Commercial buildings accounted for 18 percent of U.S. By trying to become net zero carbon and promising to do so transparently, Climate Pledge Arena could serve as a new model. Green Building Council, but that designation, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, primarily recognizes eco-friendly infrastructure, not necessarily how a building operates. “I believe our fans and sponsors will respect us and the rewards will come, but you’ve got to lead first and take your chances.”Ī growing number of sports venues have secured LEED certification from the U.S. “There’s nothing today that is going to economically reward us for going carbon neutral yet,” Leiweke said.
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