SeaWorld San Antonio Blog » Earth Day Every Day

Air Quality Stewardship Award Recipient

AnnaLisaAguirre — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:56:58 +0000

SeaWorld San Antonio was nominated for the Air Quality Stewardship Award through the Alamo Area Council of Governments. Honored by the nomination, we submitted our application for this prestigious distinction. Recently, we learned that SeaWorld was selected as an award recipient! Often times some of our conservation initiatives go unnoticed, but behind the scenes we are always looking for ways to be greener. Knowing that our decisions directly affect the environment we all live in makes our green decisions easy to make.

One of our green initiatives is fleet management. We have several pieces of equipment or vehicles that use alternative fuels. We use different types of electrical powered equipment such as forklifts, pallet jacks and segways. We also have vehicles that are powered with propane. We have several golf carts that are solar powered along with some pieces of equipment that are charged with solar panels.

Solar powered golf cart

And, we cannot forget the use of bicycles that our Security team often uses to get from place to place. For those pieces of equipment and vehicles that use diesel or gasoline, we have fueling practices that do not allow our team to refuel during the hottest parts of the day.

Many of our green initiatives allow our team members to play an active role. SeaWorld has a Team Member Recycling Center where team members can bring their clean and segregated recyclables from home. In the first year of our Team Member Recycling Center, we recycled over 10,000 pounds of recyclables!

Team Member Recycling Center

Team members who work in an office environment at the park have more efficient lighting than they had a few years ago. Some team members have even elected to work with less light fixtures in their offices. Less lighting saves on electrical consumption and also on the air conditioning demand in their area. Some team members are part of our SWEAT group – SeaWorld Environmental Action Team. SWEAT participates in different clean up activities as well as developing conservation initiatives that the park will undertake. The newest conservation initiative has the team going through the park and performing energy conservation audits by looking for ways to conserve energy throughout our facility.

Here are some community initiatives that you may not be aware of:

Parking location for Northwest Vista College
Location of VIA parking area
Participation in CPS Energy‘s Load Curtailment Program

SeaWorld San Antonio is extremely honored to be awarded by the Alamo Area Council of Governments with an Air Quality Stewardship Award.

Air Quality Stewardship Award - 2010

We definitely have our work cut out for us to continue to reduce our impact on the environment. Through the support of our team members, we will continue to make SeaWorld an even greener place to work and visit.

Composting at SeaWorld

AnnaLisaAguirre — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:04:16 +0000

Flower beds in the entrance to Lost Lagoon

Our Landscaping team does an amazing job of keeping our landscaped areas looking immaculate! But have you ever wonder what happens to the plant material that is changed in our landscaped beds? One of the tasks of the Landscaping team is changing out our plant material with plants that will thrive with our climate. So what happens to the old stuff? We take it to a large container and it is taken to a composting facility. In the month of March 2010 alone, SeaWorld San Antonio was able to compost over 800 cubic yards of plant material.

Through the process of composting, plant remains and various other organic materials decompose and create a wonderfully enriched substance that can be reused in plants and gardens. Composting greatly assists with the reduction of wastes that would otherwise be sent to a landfill.

By composting at SeaWorld, we are saving valuable space in our landfill. Used plant materials are composted and help with nutrient availability and decrease watering needs of plants. There are numerous other benefits to composting too.

Compostable material from landscaping

For those of you thinking about composting at your homes, check out HowToCompost.org or your local hardware store may even have information on how to create your own compost bin.

Some items that you may have at home that are compostable include: cardboard rolls from paper towels or toilet paper, coffee grounds and filters, eggshells, fruit and vegetables, grass and yard clippings, leaves, houseplants, tea bags, and nut shells.

Things to keep out of your compost pile:
• Dairy products – can create odor problems and attract unwanted pests
• Pet wastes – may contain parasites, bacteria or pathogens and viruses that are harmful to humans
• Insect-ridden plants – the insects may survive through the compost process and transfer into the other plant material

As we celebrate Earth Month, let’s see what we can do to make a difference in our world.

Diving Deeper: SeaWorld’s Conservation Efforts

TriciaDees — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:50:46 +0000

I bet you might not be aware of all the conservation efforts we pursue at SeaWorld San Antonio. Some you may see every time you enter the park and others take place behind the scenes. Want to learn about these efforts? Read on.

Did you know you actually drive past our aquarium every time you come to the park, but may never have noticed it? This spectacular aquarium includes live coral exhibits. Interested to know where you can spot these live coral exhibits? They are actually the first two smaller exhibits as you enter Sharks/The Coral Reef. They are gorgeous, but there is so much more to them than what meets the eye. In fact, I am willing to bet you might not know how the park is helping with coral conservation. We have aquarists participate in coral research out in the oceans to learn how to better protect them and increase their numbers. That little aquarium can help aquarists learn how to better care for the coral and apply it out in the ocean.

What about chickens? Did you know we have Attwater’s prairie chickens at our park? Actually a type of grouse, these birds are a Texas native and are critically endangered. Aviculturists here at SeaWorld are participating in research on the birds, completely off exhibit, and work with other institutions across the state to try and save the population.

Want to know more about our conservation efforts? Check out a completely different side, and probably lesser known, of the parks. The SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund continues the decades of research and rescue the parks have done. Since its beginning in 2003, the Fund has awarded over $5 million in 60 countries.

Check your conservation IQ with this educational quiz, then come back here and let me know how you did.

Tricia

Less Water, But Still Looking Good

GeoffBaldwin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:25:32 +0000

Pressure Washer tank being filled with AC Condensation

As you can imagine, keeping a park the size of SeaWorld clean is a constant challenge. Maintaining cleanliness while conserving water – well, we’ve had to get creative. Cleanliness isn’t an option. Add to that caring for our award winning landscaping and water conservation seems monumental. Not so! I have the good fortune to work with a group of people that have a “can do” attitude that never ceases to amaze me with their ingenuity.

After hours the Park Quality team washes pathways, patios and stadiums, to ensure that the park is clean upon opening the following day. They accomplish this using water from our Ski lake, re-claimed filtered water and water collected from air conditioning condensation. Along with these methods of conservation we have worked to reduce water usage by 50% during drought. Using a reduced schedule, less hosing, more pressure washing, (which uses less water than regular hosing) and increasing water reclamation, we are able to maintain the quality of our park and use less water.

On a typical night our trailer mounted pressure washing units with a 200 gallon water tank will fill up at one of several AC condensation collection tanks. Once full, they head to the area to be cleaned and get set up. This includes placing sand bags to block drains and create collection ponds. Using a simple canister filter and pumps, they vacuum the waste water from the pressure washing, filter it and back into the tank it goes for re-use. Under good conditions, they can collect 50% – 70% for re-use and will do that until they re-fill with either more condensation water or water from the lake. So far, we have re-claimed over 70,000 gallons using this simple method and over 100,000 gallons from AC condensation!

Our Landscape department hand waters pots and baskets, (up to 1,000) and depends on our irrigation system to handle the rest. Now the Landscape Team comes in at 4:00 AM to begin hand watering our 165 acres of landscaped park. They also use condensation water when available. Just like the rest of the city, we have reduced use of our automatic irrigation system, reduced some plantings, and increased hand watering to maintain our quality.

All of us at SeaWorld San Antonio want to do our part to conserve water, not just during drought, but always. We also want to maintain the highest level of quality during all conditions so that we can offer all of our guests a quality experience and a park we can all be proud of.

Well, got to go, burning day light!

To see more photos of how we conserve water, check out our Flickr photo set.

Inspiring Today’s Youth

ChanceSanford — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:23:09 +0000

Today marks the start of our camp staff training for both day and resident camp staff. As I stood in front of the eager group this morning, I discussed with them the impact they will have on children, tween, and teen’s futures this summer. SeaWorld San Antonio camp programs have produced veterinarians, animal care keepers, animal trainers, and of course education managers. Above is a video of a few young women, of which three attended our camps, remembering back to their time spent at SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Adventure Camps.

While it was great to remember previous campers, it was even more inspiring to think about what will become of our campers this year. Will we have a future marine biologist, a future killer whale trainer, or a future camp counselor? It was obvious to me from the start that this group of dedicated team members is ready to take on the task of inspiring today’s youth to make a difference.

Thanks and Gig ‘Em,

Chance

SeaWorld Saves Water

AnnaLisaAguirre — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:00:06 +0000

As the San Antonio City Manager, Sheryl Sculley, made the official declaration of Stage One on April 10^th, SeaWorld was listening. Several of SeaWorld’s management had already developed the park’s Water Conservation Plan and had submitted the plan to the San Antonio Water System.

Drought restrictions for San Antonio, which already has a year-round conservation ordinance, are quite stringent. Many of the restrictions, however, are everyday practices for our park. Under restrictions, water waste is prohibited; at SeaWorld we are always watching how our water is being used and we are always finding new ways to reuse our water or reduce consumption. SeaWorld reduces our landscape watering by at least 20% in our formal park area, and our “back of the house” area goes without water. Instead of going green, we go brown!

We also use the drought to our advantage to help educate our team members and our visitors. We use our condensation water in our park fountains and have signs placed in front of the fountain that lets our team and guests know that we are in drought conditions and encourage them to conserve water.

This life-giving natural resource has always been an integral part of our park and we consistently look for new and innovative ways to save our water. We love the opportunity to spread the word on how others can conserve water too! What are some of the ways that you can save water?

Less Water, But Still Looking Good