Croke Park: Green In More Ways Than One

August 5th, 2010 | by: Ian Rose | View Comments

If you had to guess the most sustainable, greenest stadium in the world, you might understandably assume it was one of the new ones, one of those towering behemoths built for a recent World Cup or Olympics. After all, environmental concerns are certainly a bigger part of planning a new stadium now than they were, say, 30 years ago. But you’d be, as I was, wrong. In at least some respects, the greenest park in world football is Croke Park, appropriately home of the Republic of Ireland, and a stadium first opened in 1913.

In May 2010, Croke Park received the BS 8901:2009 certification, making it the first stadium in the world to be given this award for sustainable event management. The park, used mainly for Gaelic football and hurling, is nonetheless the home ground for Ireland during the last two qualifying tournaments, and so counts at least part-time as a football ground. And even though there have been significant renovations for almost the last decade, they’ve managed to keep sustainability and impact management at the top of their priorities the whole time.

Well done to Croke and to the Irish for putting an emphasis on this. Too often, we’re awed by the newest stadium fitting 10,000 more people than the last one, or being built to look like a birds nest … or a calabash. It’s worth a nod, I think, to a stadium that looks like a stadium, but run by people that think, perhaps, about a bit more than just the game.