Sustainable Venue Spotlight: Croke Park

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Croke Park in Dublin is one of the world’s most unique and sustainable venues for live and hybrid meetings and events that inspire and entertain.

Home to sport, and hosting some of the biggest acts in the world from U2 to Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay to Beyoncé, this flexible 110 space venue is one of Irelands foremost event locations. Their sustainability journey began in 2007 when the team at this iconic venue realised Croke Park had an important part to play in managing their impact on the natural world and influencing others to do the same. 

During the recent pause in business-as-usual, the Croke Park team took stock of the stadiums journey from green goals to sustainability success and developed an insightful ebook to share with others who are starting their sustainability journey. 

Commitment to sustainable events is central to operations and ethos at Croke Park and the venue has championed sustainability, not just locally, but on a global scale.  It is accredited to international standards for sustainable event management and environmental management for over 10 years and was the very first stadium in the world to obtain certification to the newest international Environmental Standard ISO 14001. Most notably, their sustainability programme led to a reduction of almost 75% in carbon emissions and they have maintained zero waste to landfill for over six years.

Energy

Energy efficiency is an area of major focus for Croke Park. A state-of-the-art environmental improvement programme is in place covering the stadiums electricity and a range of energy efficiency measures have been implemented.

Waste

In 2014, Croke Park achieved the landmark of full waste diversion from landfill and 100% of the waste produced is now recycled, reused, or recovered as solid fuel. Not only is 0% of the venues waste sent to landfill, but there has also been a 12% reduction in the total amount of waste produced in the past 5 years. 

Water

Croke Park are members of the Water Stewardship Programme, which is accredited to European Water Stewardship Standards (EWS), designed to help reduce water consumption and introduce more efficient water management and monitoring across the facility and operations.

Biodiversity & Nature

One of the more engaging projects is Croke Park’s biodiversity programme which started in 2015 with a bug ‘bee & bee’ and by 2018 the venue had purchased its own farm to grow turf for pitch maintenance and reduce carbon emissions associated with importation. The farm is used to grow herbs and vegetables with beehives producing Croke Park honey and plans for a native orchard development.

Community

The venues relationship with their nearest neighbours is an important focus with projects in place to lessen their impact of events on the community and help the area thrive. These include a community fund project, a community team, and youth initiatives programme. These community initiatives featured as a best practice case study in the recent Regenerative Revolution: A new paradigm for event management, a cooperative publication by IMEX, Global Destination Sustainability Movement and Marriott. Guy Bigwood, FIEMA, Chief Changemaker at the GDS-Movement said;

 “When it comes to sustainability, Croke Park is up there amongst the global innovators. We were delighted to feature Croke Park in our recent publication, The Regenerative Revolution: A new paradigm for Event Management as Croke Park is truly setting universal standards across all aspects of sustainability from energy, waste and water to biodiversity, community and accessibility. Their sustainability story highlights a shift from sustainability to regenerative thinking, and this is the future. I salute the entire team at the stadium for their commitment and vision”.

For more on the Croke Park Sustainability Programme and the projects that delivered this success, download Lofty Ambition to Lived Dream: Our Sustainability StoryHow Croke Park become a sustainable venue at crokepark.ie/meetings-events/sustainability

Contact Details:

+353 1 819 2300
events@crokepark.ie
www.crokepark.ie/meetings-events

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Adam Parry
Author: Adam Parry

Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.