Sustainability part of Croke Park DNA

Article posted by Coliseum, August 19^th, 2024

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Peter McKenna believes in living life more sustainably and also believes in adopting practices which will have minimum impact on the environment.

Full presentation available exclusively for Coliseum members

McKenna is the Stadium and Commercial Director of Croke Park. Sustainability is in the warp and weft of Croke Park (Dublin, Ireland) and they take sustainability as seriously as sports.

Peter McKenna was appointed as the Stadium Director of the Croke Park Stadium in 2001. He is responsible for the operation and management of the Croke Park Stadium and is tasked with steering the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA’s) sponsorship, media rights, licensing, and general games promotion.

In a ‘Green’ talk with ‘Coliseum’, Peter McKenna, Stadium and Commercial Director, Croke Park Stadium, Ireland, gives an insight into the Green journey of the Croke Park which started way back in 2007. He asserted that sustainability is a part of the venue’s core value and runs in the veins and also informed that the Croke Park is a zero waste stadium and the team at the facility pulls out all stops to ensure that the stadium conducts its day to day business following in toto the principles of sustainability.

Croke Park

The 82,300-capacity Croke Park is a Gaelic games stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is referred to as Croker by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) fans and the locals. It serves as both the principal national stadium of Ireland and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association.

GAA Background

Peter McKenna starts off by dishing out details of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) – “The Gaelic Athletic Association who I represent was founded in 1884 and is Ireland’s largest sporting and cultural organization. We have 2,000 clubs worldwide and 700,000 members. I am very proud of the fact that 84 percent of what we generate is recycled back into our clubs and our counties.”

Talking a little bit about Croke Park he said, “We have been home of the GAA for over 100 years. We are Europe’s third-largest stadium with a capacity of 82,300. The stadium was rebuilt over a period between 1993 and 2005 and won the Royal Institute of Architects Gold Medal designed at that time. We are very proud of the fact that we are the first stadium in Ireland and Britain to secure both International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 and ISO 20121 standards.”

Climate Bomb

Painting a grim picture of the environment, McKenna stated, “We have many environmental problems – climate warming, waste disposal, single-use plastics, water shortages, population growth, deforestation, depletion of resources, changes in biodiversity, and food scarcity.”

Talking about carbon emissions, he opined, “We think carbon dioxide is really a problem but it is actually quite smaller than the atmosphere. The atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen – over 77 percent. The problem with carbon dioxide is it is absolutely fantastic of retaining heat. If we didn’t have it we would all freeze to death but when we have it at .4 percent or .04 percent that causes temperature rises and colossal problems related to that.”

He pointed out that six percent of the worldwide carbon emissions are from livestock – “Even more frightening in terms of biodiversity is 94 percent of global mammal biomass excluding humans is livestock. Seventy one percent of all global bird biomass is poultry livestock.”

On carbon footprints in sports, McKenna estimated that the global carbon footprint of worldwide sport is 325 million tonnes of CO₂ per annum – “What does that mean? It’s about 2.6 percent of China’s output annually, about half of Germany’s output annually and 10 times Ireland’s output. We use the World Cup as a model – 74 percent of emissions are related to fan transport and five (5) percent to food and beverage (F&B).”

He emphasized that to minimize the dangerous impact of global warming on the planet, the Croke Park is trying to put its best Green foot forward and they take utmost care to ensure that sustainability is at the core of everything they do starting from events by holding paperless meetings, building new water harvesting tanks on site and even the mouth watering menus at Croke Park has sustainability at their core.

McKenna said with a sense of pride, “This is something we are mighty proud of – We have been since 2014 a zero to landfill facility. So, from the end of 2014 to now 2023 we produced just over 4,000 tonnes of waste. All our waste was diverted from landfill and is being recycled, reused or recovered. Also, since 2014, we reduced our total waste by 45 percent.”

Sum-up

A die-hard Green, he questioned, “Does one really need fresh flowers on the table, do you really need linen table clothes and linen napkins for all the washing cycles that they need to go through?”

Peter McKenna concluded by averring, “The Croke Park’s Green journey which started in 2008 has a lot of positive highlights. We are aligned to the UN Sport for Climate Action Plan (collaboration between the sports organizations and their communities to help achieve global climate change goals) and committed to
50 percent reduction in carbon footprint by 2030. And we are looking for a Net Zero position by 2050 though it is going to be tough because it involves fan travel. The Green initiatives have to be ingrained into the value system of an organization and one just cannot have them as sidebars.”

And sustainability is a part of Croke Park’s DNA and the stadium is taking meaningful actions and it is fundamental to the way they do business. Moreover, though venues try to keep birds out “but at Croke Park we have ‘swift boxes’, home for swifts, a bird species now amber-listed in Ireland due to their declining numbers”!

Continue to follow Coliseum for latest updates on venues business news. Coliseum is dedicated towards building the best global community of sports and entertainment venue executives and professionals creating better and more profitable venues.

Become a member of the only Global Sports Venue Alliance and connect with stadiums, arenas and experts from around the world. Apply for membership at coliseum-online.com/alliance and make use of the 365Coliseum Business.