Call me impressed, Mr. Dickerson

Chris Dickerson and Jack Cassel (Asstros) have launched a green initiative called We Play Green.

We Play Green is a call to action throughout all of professional sports to provide stadiums, locker rooms and playing fields with the proper recycling receptacles and outlets to help corral the amount of plastic that is used during the extent of the season. We need our players, front office and managerial personnel to help in this fight to clean up the environment. We will call upon team officials to cooperate with city officials as well as local recycling outlets to help provide the necessary equipment. In addition, our call to action extends to the millions of sports fans on how they can play green in their every day lives.

We are also working to get every team to utilize reusable water bottles, largely cutting the use of plastic water bottles throughout the clubhouse and on the field in the hotter months of the season. The SIGG COMPANY, a leading manufacturer of Swiss made aluminum water bottles, has agreed to supply the Cincinnati Reds with 50 bottles this coming 2009 season to help reduce the use of plastic bottles throughout spring training and the regular season. These bottles are highly durable and specially forged to maximize durability and longevity. They proved to be a great help in the locker room since and because of them, players limited their use of plastic. The next transition in this process is to limit the amount of water bottles purchased by the team and replace them with water jugs. Players will use these to fill up their re-usable aluminum bottles and make huge contributions to the reduction of the use of plastic throughout the baseball season.

Other ballplayers contributing to the organization include Cincinnati's own Jay Bruce, as well as Chase Utley, Ryan Braun, Jon Garland, and Geoff Jenkins, to name a few. The list includes a lot of young ballplayers, some with whom I'm not familiar. It's nice to see a new generation coming up with an awareness about what we've done to the planet.