Case Study: GP PRO Supports Source Waste Reduction

GP PRO—a division of Georgia-Pacific and manufacturer of advanced dispensing and smart monitoring solutions—is joining sustainability trailblazers from Lumen Field, Seattle; Oracle Park, San Francisco; and Progressive Field, Cleveland; at this year’s Green Sports Alliance (GSA) Summit.

The GSA Summit is one of the largest and most influential gatherings of sports and sustainability. As a Gold sponsor, GP PRO will showcase how its Internet of Things (IoT), KOLO Smart Monitoring System is helping venues turn zero-waste goals into measurable business outcomes. The company will also lead a main-stage panel discussion entitled, "Smart Venues are Closing the Sustainability Loop."

“Resilience in sports operations requires building a foundation of data that empowers teams to be more proactive and productive,” says John Strom, Vice President and General Manager, Innovation at GP PRO. “By using Smart Monitoring to help reduce source waste, the visionaries at Lumen Field, Oracle Park, and Progressive Field are creating more sustainable, circular playbooks, enabling them to win the ‘waste game’ at every stage of their journey while facilitating a more sustainable future for the sports industry.”

Measuring What Matters Most

During their respective 2025 sports seasons, three iconic venues leveraged GP PRO's smart system's real-time alerts to drive significant gains in operational efficiency and sustainability while achieving up to 60 percent reductions in source waste.

Key highlights include:

• Oracle Park: Home of Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants, the facility made significant progress in reducing tissue and towel waste by preventing 3,598 pounds of emissions—equivalent to planting 41 trees.
• Progressive Field: Home of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, the venue enhanced towel-specific efficiency. This site will also host the GSA Summit’s opening night reception.
• Lumen Field: Home of National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders FC, and National Women’s Soccer League’s Seattle Reign FC, measured the lowest overall waste, bolstering its TRUE Gold Certification achievement in late 2025.

Lumen Field: Blueprint for Closed-Loop Operations

Seattle’s Lumen Field remains relentless in its quest to ensure a resilient legacy for the Pacific Northwest and the sports industry at large. Central to this strategy is the deployment of GP PRO's Smart Monitoring System across 1,100 tissue and towel dispensers—a move that has empowered frontline hospitality and custodial teams to move from guesswork to data-driven precision.

“We have seen a huge impact on our operations,” notes Christy Briggs, Sustainability Manager, Lumen Field. “The technology itself, which has a low footprint and was installed in days, packs a big punch by saving thousands of rolls of paper to reduce our upstream waste by 75 percent.”

Looking ahead, Lumen Field is exploring how Georgia-Pacific Recycling could assist in direct-to-mill materials recovery, remove unnecessary and costly links from its supply chain, and ensure sorted materials have a verifiable second life. A subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, GP Recycling moves more than 5 million tons of recyclable materials annually, including providing over 2 million tons of recycled cardboard and other wastepaper to the Georgia-Pacific mill system to make products people rely on every day.

“Resilience is being prepared for what the world will be in 10 years by having a strategy today about the materials you use and how to reduce, reuse, and recover waste as part of closed-loop sustainability,” Briggs concludes. “Your success may look different from mine, but once the framework is in place, you will see recurring results that ultimately will make a difference."

GSA Summit Showcase and Panel Session

GP PRO will showcase its Smart Monitoring System at the GSA Summit, held May 5th through May 7th at the Huntington Convention Center, Cleveland. GP Recycling will also be on hand to describe its suite of services, which leverage traditional trading channels as well as its innovative online platform to divert millions of tons of recyclable materials away from landfills and back into the economy each year.

Joining GP PRO’s John Strom for the May 7th panel, “Smart Venues are Closing the Sustainability Loop,” are Christy Briggs from Lumen Field; along with Alejandra Alvarez, Senior Manager, Maintenance Operations, San Francisco Giants/Oracle Park; and Rosalie Morrison, Assistant Director, Facility Operations, Cleveland Guardians/Progressive Field.