Climate Pledge Arena’s Brianna Treat on Venue Sustainability at VenuesNow Conference

In addition to insightful panels, fascinating fireside chats and plenty of networking opportunities, the annual VenuesNow Conference offers attendees the chance to tour a local venue. Held Sept. 29-30 in Seattle, this year’s edition of VNC will feature an Opening Reception, presented by United Healthcare and supported by Cisco Systems, and a tour, sponsored by Middleby, of Climate Pledge Arena.

The 18,000-capacity multipurpose arena, which is operated by and was developed by Pollstar parent company Oak View Group and home to the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, PWHL’s Seattle Torrent and WNBA’s Seattle Storm, is one of the most sustainable venues in the world. The venue’s name alone is a reminder of the urgent need for climate action and a nod to the commitment co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019 for companies globally to be net zero carbon by 2040.

Among its certifications, Climate Pledge Arena is the first arena in the world to achieve the International Living Future Institute Zero Carbon Certification and has been awarded TRUE (Total Resource Use and Efficiency) Platinum certification for operating as functionally zero waste arena, with over 90% of waste generated onsite diverted from a landfill.

Sustainability is built into every facet of Climate Pledge Arena, from its water conservation efforts including waterless urinals and utilizing a rainwater capture system from the venue’s original 1962 roof structure to generate NHL ice to how the arena on-site sorts every single bag of trash to ensure every material is diverted to the correct waste stream.

Ahead of the tour, we checked in with Brianna Treat, Director of Sustainability, Seattle Kraken/Climate Pledge Arena. Here, in her own words, Treat shares highlights about Climate Pledge and how others can make their buildings more sustainable. ON INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY SEAMLESSLY INTO YOUR VENUE: We like to [say] that we’ve got you covered from the moment that you leave your house. … We’ve offered you free public transit – subsidized two hours before and after our events. It’s the cleanest way and fastest way to get to the venue. About 27% of all of our fans are taking public transit, which is what we want to see.

We’re still the world’s only arena and largest project in the world to achieve the zero-carbon certification through the International Living Future Institute. It’s one of the most stringent carbon certifications in the world.

So best believe you can come to our venue, experience a large scale event knowing that our environmental footprint is very teeny because all of the work that we’ve done – it’s really behind-the-scenes-invisible to the average attendee.

We procure 75% of all of our ingredients within a 300 mile radius of the building. That was a carbon reduction strategy because the fewer miles that our food and beverage travel to our venue, fewer greenhouse gas emissions are emitted.

We divert over 96% of all of our waste away from a landfill every single event. So, we’re a zero waste venue. We have one of the highest diversion rates of any arena or venue in the world, which is something that we’re really proud of.

We’ve eliminated all single-use plastics fan-facing for purchase as of 2024. So, there are no landfills in our venue. You’re only going to be interacting with reuse, compost, and recycling.

And then we launched a reusable cup program [with Bold Reuse] in August of 2025. And since the launch of that program, we have collected, washed, and reused over 350,000 reusable cups, which is incredible because we use about a million cups a year. And a million cups is not nothing, So the fact that we’re able to clean and reuse those is huge for our environmental footprint. …

You may not even know that this is all going on because we’ve integrated it in such a way … We actually think that it’s accelerating the fan experience by not being in your face and just being such a seamless thing.

HOW OTHER VENUES CAN BECOME ZERO-CARBON CERTIFIED: I think it’s just about being intentional, right? I think that one thing that’s really special about Climate Pledge Arena is that we have proved that sports and live entertainment have a place in combating the climate crisis. And I think what we’ve done is proven that we can attack a large-scale event that traditionally exudes a lot of waste, a lot of emissions by just being a business, by just holding an event.

And I think that what we’ve done a really good job of here in Seattle is proving that there are things that we can do as a venue, as a sports team, to still hold great large-scale events, but at little detriment to the environment. And if we can do it, there is no excuse for any other venue to not do it, right? It’s a decision at the end of the day. And I think that that’s kind of what we’ve made clear here in Seattle is that a venue can do it. We started off from scratch. We had no idea what we were doing and now we’ve done it. And now we want others to join in that fight because Climate Pledge Arena isn’t going to fight the climate crisis alone, right? We need all of our friends, all of our buddies. That’s the point.

WHERE TO START? What I tell most venues is [determine] what matters most? What are your values? Are you trying to eliminate waste? Are you trying to understand carbon? Are you trying to conserve water? … Really lean into your region. And for us that’s rain capture, right? But for Las Vegas it might look like solar. Lean on what you have, where you’re at to help you, right? And then ask for help. Like we had no idea what we were doing when we did all this. We asked for so much help and that’s how we’re all going to make it. … One thing that we really pride ourselves on here is that we’re very transparent. If some other venue across the globe needed help with waste, you best believe we’re sending them all of our resources. And so it’s just like ask for help [and] figure out that one thing that helps you regionally and do it very very well.

_Originally reported by [Pollstar](https://news.pollstar.com/2026/09/25/venuesnow-conference-preview-climate-pledge-arenas-brianna-treat-talks-integrating-sustainability-seamlessly-into-your-venue/)._