Croke Park, Cúl Green

Cill25

I'm involved in Cul Green (www.culgreen.ie), project aimed at making Croke Park carbon neutral over next six years - it involves an environmental-improvement programme covering the stadium's electricity, waste and water management systems and also a campaign to encourage fans to minimize their carbon footprint (leave car at home etc)

With over 2 million people attending Croke Park each year so quite a carbon footprint ....

Thought you might be interested in some of the detail - launched in May 2008 and some interesting updates at the stadium since then - “green electricity” tariff from a 100% renewable source (wind) which has immediately cut its annual carbon emissions by two thirds, a Park & Ride scheme was introduced with several GAA clubs, recycling initiatives added including large recycling stations, wheelie bins for recycling plastic bottles, cardboard balers and a recyclable compactor (plans are underway to further develop recycling facilities at the stadium with the introduction of plastic bailing and wet waste composting of food waste) and we are currently assessing sources of sustainable energy which has seen wind monitoring equipment installed at the stadium to help decide if wind energy is a realistic option for Croke Park given the wind energy generation technologies currently available.

Couple of interesting examples in UK also - non-league Dartford while not great at soccer have a top class eco-stadium at Princes Park. It has two rainwater lakes for the staggering 20,000 litres of water a day it takes to maintain a football pitch, as well as solar panels, a sustainably sourced timber framework, state-of-the-art insulation and a 'living roof.'

Only early stages at Croke Park and long way to go but will keep you updated, also more detail at www.culgreen.ie

mumhaabu

The first thing Croke Park should do is give Irish Rail a good bashing, I travelled to every Kerry gaa match this year except the Quarter Final, had to drive to Dublin several times due to unavailability of Train tickets, Kerry had 4 matches in Dublin this year, Quarter Final, Semi-Final, Semi-Final Replay and All-Ireland final and I only got Train tickets to the Final.

I'd rather have taken the Train each time. I drove up twice as a result of Irish Rails crass stupidity, placing tickets online exclusivly when less than 15% of Kerry people have functional (Broadband) Internet access. I since have got very good broadband but the point is that if the GAA are serious about this they need to make sure that Public Transport is available for these games. I missed the Monaghan game due to not having a train ticket and drove up for both Semi-finals with a car load full 5 and for the semi-final with only two occupants. As a result I used almost 130litres of Petrol plus the annoyance of a nearly 450 mile round trip from Kerry to Dublin and back in the day.

There should be train stations in Croke Park at both the Canal End and Hill 16 end as Train lines run adajenct to both allowing fans to flee the capital quickly which would have been great after Tyrone beat Kerry:o

lostexpectation

theres very little info about the wind power you are paying for on the site, i had click through to esbie and the hibernian power to get to it.