(Chris Dickerson on deck)

Vin Scully knows just about anything and everything about baseball and the Dodgers.  For all those who are lucky enough to tune in to Vin calling Dodger games, you would also find that he knows just as much about every ball player from any team.  One night, as I watched the boys in blue take on the Cincinnati Reds, Chris Dickerson came to the plate.  Vin did the usual run-down on the career of Chris and where he was from but he also happened to mention another interesting tidbit about Chris Dickerson's life.

As it turns out, Chris Dickerson, outfielder of the Cincinnati Reds and fellow ball player Jack Cassel of the Cleveland Indians are the founders of WePlayGreen.org, a foundation that brings professional athletes together to inspire communities to build awareness of the growing environmental crisis.  Vin emphasized the fact that one of their main objectives is to reduce the use of plastic water bottles.

I was inspired to get ahold of Chris, who is the CEO of WePlayGreen.org. After telling him about Play City, he was more than welcome to have me call him on the phone before a ball game.

Chris Dickerson was born and raised in the Los Angeles area. He has been involved in just about every organized sport starting with soccer in his youth to football and baseball.  He attended the University of Nevada where he played college ball for three seasons before he was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 2003.  He finally achieved his dream when he was called up by the Cincinnati Reds to make his major league debut in 2008.

It was in college that Chris started to think about our environmental impact and consumption.  He started to use BRITA water filters instead of water bottles at home. Documentaries like "An Inconvenient Truth" opened his eyes to what might become of our planet if we don't act now.  He even noticed all the plastic that was being used in baseball clubhouses with a lack of recycling receptacles.

From those experiences alone, Chris and his good friend decided to form WePlayGreen.org.  He has helped bring environmental awareness to Major League Baseball, and the impact is already being made.  Major league teams such as the Dodgers, Indians, and Rays have lessened the use of plastic water bottles by replacing them with Sigg reusable aluminum bottles, a product that Chris has been using for awhile now.  MLB has also made a push to set an example along with the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) by organizing recycling drives such as the huge drive held during the MLB All-Star Game in Yankee stadium.

Major league stadiums such as Seattle's Safeco Field, Houston's Minute Maid Park, and Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark have stepped up to the plate (no pun intended) in the environmental movement by composting waste and grass from the field as well as converting the oil from the fryers in the stadiums to make biodiesel.  The Cleveland Indians have even installed solar panels at Progressive Field to power all 1,100 monitors throughout the stadium.

That is barely the tip of the iceberg for what Chris Dickerson plans to do. WePlayGreen will be partnering with LRG Clothing to launch a new line of eco-friendly pre-consumed cotton apparel this fall.  On top of his environmental activism, he gives back to the kids in Cincinnati by visiting at-risk youth in surrounding communities to help encourage them to use baseball as a way to keep out of trouble.

For those who are wondering what they can do to get involved, Chris put it simply:
"It's really just the little things that we can do to make a positive impact on our environment. Small things like getting recycling bins in Little League fields or even just installing a BRITA water system at home or using aluminum reusable water bottles can make a huge difference."

Before I got off the phone with Chris, I asked him if there was more activism in store for him after baseball.  He plans to make it a full-time thing, and to expand WePlayGreen.org into a large scale endeavor.  Major League stadiums doing their part is not enough.  He would like to see all high schools and amateur facilities improve their waste management and decrease plastic consumption within the next 5-10 years, as well as implement steps for renewable energy.  That's a lot on the table, but he is confident that the little things that we can do now will eventually make a huge impact on our planet.

(From Left to Right: Jenny Corace, VP of Corporate Development, Jack Cassel, Co-Founder, and Chris Dickerson, Founder and CEO)

Be sure to check out WePlayGreen.org for updates and to read all about the athletes that are involved.

When I think of a city rooftop, I think of concrete and tar, and the toxic smell when it gets hot.  Nothing much happens on my roof, although I’ve imagined all the potential it could have. I’ve heard of ‘green roof’s and have looked up to see tree growing atop fancy new condominiums and office buildings. This seems to be the trend now; the United States Postal Office unveiled one of the largest ones this Wednesday atop the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center on the west side of Manhattan. The 2.5 acre space is now “parklike recreational space for its employees, with benches, billowing grasses and a view of the skyline that includes the Empire State Building.” The roof, despite costing a lot more money upfront, will last twice as long a conventional roof, and help save tremendously on insulation. I hope more buildings will follow along!

Source:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/postal-service-unveils-large-green-roof/

Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer Peter Vanderkaay (a.k.a. PVK) thinks water is cool. Very cool. So cool, in fact, that he teamed up with Blue Planet Run to raise awareness about our global water crisis.

Now Peter is swimming several days per week, and he estimates that he will swim 560 miles in training over the next couple of months! But in the midst of his very busy training schedule, Peter found the time to make a video about water sustainability with a few tips on how to ensure safe water access.

So how much do you think you know about clean water? Take the quiz.

That's yours truly after catching the lunker to end all lunkers.  I threw him back, believe it or not.  How's that for sustainable?

My post about the beginning of National Ocean Month piqued the curiosity of YouthNoise community member Drenne this morning, and I received a comment within a few hours of the post going up.  The comment read "we all keep hearing about how environmentally unsustainable it is to eat meat, and i know there have been some worries about unsustainable fishing practices.  what have you heard about that? can you make a post about it?"

I sure can, and I'd be glad to.

We all have some idea about where meat and dairy products come from-- we sing about Old MacDonald's farm, and the animals that he raises for milk and hamburger meat.  We may not think about the ugly particulars of high-volume industrial farming or what goes on in the slaughterhouse, but we know that the meat came from a farm, and that the animals were bred to become food.

For most of my life, when I thought about seafood, I envisioned fishermen with fishing poles on personal boats.  I suppose its because I grew up around a lot of people who fished for sport, and I have a good time fishing myself.  But just like most of our meat comes from a farm and not from a hunter, lots of the seafood available in the supermarket comes from large-scale industrial fisheries where fish are bred or captured in startlingly large numbers.

Here is an example of what indoor fisheries look like.  It's not all rods-n-reels, that's for sure.

Fish are sometimes hearded into a small area and raised for food in a farm-like manner, and these fisheries have similar environmental effects to those of farms which are dense with animals.  Animal populations in close quarters are more susceptible to disease, partially because they produce a large volume of waste in a small area.  This leads to less-than-desirable meat and unwanted runoff whether we're talking about fish or land animals.

This turtle is an example of bycatch.  I threw him back as well, but not all accidentally hooked turtles are so lucky.

More often than farming, however, fish are simply caught by giant fishing rigs, often in nets.  These huge operations have two main problems.  The first is 'bycatch', or the capture of unintended animals like dolphins and turtles.  The other big problem is even simpler-- overfishing.  The huge demand for seafood pushes commercial fishermen to capture larger volumes of fish than the ocean can support. 

Seafood, however, is really good for you.  So what can be done?

The World Wildlife Foundation works with a number of other, more specialized groups to promote sustainable fisheries.  The Marine Stewardship Council began assessing the sustainability of fish for sale in 1996, and approves only what they deem to be 'sustainable' fish.  Check their website for information on what kinds of fish are eco-friendly.  Obviously this isn't the full solution, but awareness is a good start.  When the market demands sustainable fish, fisheries will have to keep up.
 

Water conservationists and golf course owners have never been the best of buddies. An eco-friendly golf course sounds like an oxymoron—a big green water hog sounds more familiar.

But last week, the New York Times posted an article about new wireless sensors that can help reduce water usage on golf courses. These "subterranean wireless sensors...monitor moisture, temperature and salinity in the soil and feed the data to a software network accessed remotely on a laptop, a handheld device or a desktop computer," reports NYT. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

These systems will help some golf courses save millions of gallons of water per year. This will cut operating costs and reduce the strain on drought-affected communities where water usage is a hotly contested issue.

Will water-saving sensor technology transform golf into a "green" sport? Surely, there are other factors to consider, including synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, and responsible land management. But water conservation efforts are a step in the right direction, especially when considering the fact that we can use this technology for other applications such as soccer and football fields, public parks and recreational facilities.

At around $11,000 a pop, these systems are still out of reach for most Little League baseball fields and community recreation areas. But if golf courses begin adopting these systems en masse, manufacturers may start producing smaller, less expensive setups that will help athletic field owners across the country adopt smarter water management practices...

...Or lazier practices, since machines would actually be doing most of the work. I guess this saves time and energy that can be used to perfect that golf swing.

What do you think?