Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta has been set on sustainability since it opened in 2017. Renowned businessman and owner Arthur M. Blank challenged his leaders at AMB Sports and Entertainment to raise the standard and create the most sustainable stadium in the US. Adam Fullerton, VP of Stadium Operations and Andrew Bohenko, Sustainability Initiatives Manager, explained to Hannah Barnett how the stadium manages its environmental footprint on such a vast scale.
Home to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, and Atlanta United of MLS, Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a key part of its community. It also stages large concerts, recently welcoming both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
The stadium first achieved zero waste in March 2022. Covering 1.9 million square feet, with a capacity of 75,000, the stadium welcomed three million visitors last year and produced three million pounds of rubbish. Consequently, getting to zero waste is no mean feat.
However, in 2022, Mercedes-Benz Stadium diverted 90% of its waste away from landfill without incineration.
It is an impressive achievement, but one, like the rest of the stadium’s sustainable policies, that relies on cooperation from its employees and wide range of partners. “We can’t do this alone,” VP of Stadium Operations Adam Fullerton said. “It takes all of us to get there.”
Zero-waste
Composting is a vital element of the stadium’s sustainability and something it has scaled-up in just a few years. “When I started this job in 2019, our composting operation was done in a couple of paint buckets,” Mr Fullerton recalled. “Now we have two 34-yard self-contained compactors. And we turn those over several times a week.”
The stadium became TRUE Platinum certified in 2022. The base requirement for the accreditation is demonstrating a 90%
diversion rate over a 12-month period, as well as showing that certain materials are upcycled, with zero waste policies implemented company-wide.
As the stadium was already operating as a zero waste facility, it achieved the TRUE Platinum certification for zero waste in six months rather than the usual 12 to 15 and established itself as a leader in the industry.
“TRUE certification is meaningful in many ways, because it shows that everybody at every level of this company believes in what we’re doing,” Sustainability Initiatives Manager Andrew Bohenko said. “It’s impossible for any one person to make this place
zero waste. It takes everybody to push this across their departments and for the fans to be on board as well.”
“It also cemented us in the United States as the front-runner in sustainability,” Mr Fullerton added. “We are having the sustainability conversation with venues around the country now and our goal is to bring everyone along with us.”
Social sustainability
Situated in downtown Atlanta, it is important for the stadium to be part of the community. As a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum-rated facility, and the first LEED Platinum certified professional sports stadium in North America, part of its certification came from its water-diversion programme. This was to alleviate some of the flooding typically experienced on the west side of Atlanta.
When constructing the new stadium, the company instituted a 1.1-million-gallon water retention vault and 680,000-gallon cistern to collect water from the west side
to the 14-acre roof. The reclaimed water is used to supplement the stadium’s AC cooling towers and used to water the onsite urban garden. Between the underground retention vault, cistern, and three bio swells; Mercedes-Benz Stadium can divert over two million gallons of water away from flooding in the west side communities of Atlanta.
Then there is the food donation programme, which processed over 70,000 meals last year. “It is a very robust program,” Mr Bohenko said. “It’s something we’re very proud of. Last year, we donated 86,000 pounds of food, that’s over 260,000 pounds of donations since the building opened, and the number keeps going up.”
As with all its sustainable initiatives, the company works closely with other businesses to ensure a smooth operation,
in this case food and beverage partner Levy, and Second Helpings, a local nonprofit organisation.
“It’s not just typical stadium food like chicken wings and French fries being
donated,” Mr Bohenko added. “A lot of the food donated comes from the premium areas and includes things like prepared steak, chicken, etc. It’s portioned up and made into meals.
“By utilising our resources, we’re getting food to people that need it. Composting is great, we’re very proud of our composting programme. But to take a material and use it for its intended purpose, is the pinnacle of sustainability.”
Another significant initiative is Recycle for Good, in partnership with Novelis, the world’s largest aluminium recycler, also
located in Atlanta. The cans collected from the stadium are recycled and the financial rebate is donated back through Novelis to build homes with Habitat for Humanity in Atlanta.
“Recycle for Good is one of the best programmes we have,” Mr Fullerton said. “We’ve built four homes now, just from the proceeds of aluminium recycling. It’s a wonderful partnership and something that ties our stadium to the neighbourhood and the city.”
Significant partnerships
All full-time employees at Mercedes-Benz Stadium are now given sustainability tours, to encourage collaboration across the workforce.
“We show them things like the resource recovery room, where waste items like our Phade biodegradable straws are sorted,
because most of them will never go down there otherwise,” Mr Bohenko explained. “It’s for employees to understand the impact of their actions and to consider the labour hours lost if they throw something in the wrong bin.”
With its LEED Zero and TRUE Platinum certification for zero waste, Mercedes-Benz Stadium is making a name for itself in sustainability circles. It has developed a zero waste playbook to document the first five years of the stadium and show how it became the zero waste establishment it is today.
“The idea is that others can take our best practices, and lessons learned, bring that to their stadiums, and hopefully shrink our timeline,” Mr Bohenko said. “We’ve had representatives visit from the University of Michigan, University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Tech. We’ve also had several professional sports teams and developers come through, with the intention to take what they learn back to those they work with and institute it in their spaces.”
With the success of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, AMB Sports and Entertainment remains a pioneer in sustainable stadium construction and management. The vision for the future is simple: carry the message.
“It really is an exciting, emerging industry within stadiums,” Mr Bohenko concluded. “We reach so many people each and every event, but we want to communicate our message to all 10 million Georgians.
“It’s very challenging work but it’s also very rewarding. On my first day, our COO Dietmar Exler said: ‘get us to zero waste as quickly as possible.’ That was the mandate. It wasn’t ‘here’s your budget to get us to zero waste.’ That gave me a lot of leeway and confidence to try new things.” n
