Gentlemen, Start Conserving

Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Last year, 40,000 solar panels were installed at Pocono Raceway

By KEN BELSON

Published: September 12, 2011

Is green Nascar an oxymoron? After all, the sport is all about watching gas guzzlers drive at high speeds in circles for hours. Until 2007, race cars used leaded fuel. Tens of thousands of fans still drive to races in recreational vehicles and other gas hogs.

But more than any other American sport, Nascar is also a for-profit business, and like many companies these days, it is focused on cutting costs by recycling, conserving and generating its own energy. While the core of the sport remains unchanged, Nascar, its teams, track operators and sponsors are employing an ambitious set of green initiatives that includes collecting used fuel, planting trees to offset carbon emissions, and deploying sheep to keep the infield grass short.

Going green not only saves money that can be spent on drivers and cars, but it has also created new revenue by attracting sponsors to Nascar that want to trumpet their eco-friendliness to the millions of fans who watch races on television and at the track.

Of course, these efforts will not alter the essence of a sport that celebrates fast cars that burn copious amounts of gasoline, a fact that has led many critics to accuse Nascar of greenwashing, or claiming unfairly to be environmentally friendly. But many who work in Nascar say that reducing and recycling are imperative precisely because so much waste is produced, and if money can be saved in the process, all the better.

“The incongruity is part of what makes going green in this sport so impactful,” said Michael Lynch, Nascar’s director of green innovation. “There’s a bias that the sport is not green and therefore the fans aren’t green.”

Nascar is not the first sport to have an eco-campaign. Baseball teams including the St. Louis Cardinals and the Seattle Mariners are aggressively recycling and conserving. The Portland Trail Blazers, the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic among other N.B.A. teams play in arenas certified by the United States Green Building Council. The builders of a new Formula One track in Austin, Tex., are planning a host of environmental initiatives, including buying carbon offsets.

Many environmentalists support these efforts not just because of the volume of resources consumed at stadiums and at arenas, but also because so many people watch sports and are likely to follow examples set by the players, teams and leagues. This may be particularly true at Nascar races, where the event itself is about consumption.

“This is not the sport that you would expect to hear green messages, so it’s a good learning opportunity,” said Andrew Winston, who runs Winston Eco-Strategies. “You’re reaching millions of people who have not heard much about it at all and are sometimes hostile to it. So if you open their eyes to it, it’s certainly worth it.”

Indeed, the greening of Nascar is a sweeping undertaking because so many people attend so many races in so many places, at tracks that are turned into small cities with all the associated problems of garbage, water, power, sewage and air quality. To tackle these challenges in a systematic way, Nascar hired Lynch in 2008, just as teams, tracks and others in the sport started to feel the effects of the recession.

Rather than institute rules, Lynch brought people from all parts of Nascar together to figure out how environmental programs could help them cut tens of millions of dollars in costs without imposing too much strain on their operations.

Lynch started by expanding efforts already under way. Safety-Kleen, a $1.2 billion recycler of automotive fluids that started working with Nascar two decades ago, expanded its collection of used fuels, lubricants and oily rags at tracks and race team shops. In addition to the 225,000 gallons of fluids it expects to bring in this year, Safety-Kleen also recycles oil filters, fluorescent light bulbs, metal shavings, aluminum and steel.

“None of that goes in a landfill,” said Drew Patey, the director of motor sports for Safety-Kleen which, because of its alliance with Nascar, now works at IndyCar races, too. “Guys in the heartland who didn’t see recycling as a priority are seeking us out.”

Nascar also claims to have the largest recycling program in sports because of Coca-Cola and Coors Light, two Nascar sponsors that are expected to recycle about 12 million bottles and cans this season, twice as much as last year. At races, the trucking company Freightliner stations a clean-diesel rig — with a Richard Petty custom paint scheme — bearing a Coca-Cola compactor that crushes up to 1,000 containers a minute. Hundreds of tons of cardboard are also collected each season.