As Mariners win, garbage piles up: Roughly 10 tons per sellout game
Oct 17, 2025, 3:44 PM
Trash lines the floor of the visitor's dugout after a baseball game. (Photo: Brian Blanco, Getty Images)
(Photo: Brian Blanco, Getty Images)
Playoff baseball in Seattle is in full swing, and T-Mobile Park has seen multiple sellout crowds over the course of the team’s deep run. An often overlooked detail from a day at the park is the amount of garbage left behind.
Wednesday night’s game against the Blue Jays was expected to result in approximately 200,000 individual pieces of garbage being thrown out in the stadium, according to The Seattle Times.
On average, each person inside T-Mobile Park accounted for at least four pieces of garbage, whether it be drink cans, popcorn bags, or a hot dog wrapper.
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Tons of garbage produced by Mariners fans
Dave Wilke, senior director of facilities with the stadium, told The Seattle Times that T-Mobile Park expects roughly 10 tons of garbage for each sold-out game it hosts, which is more than one-third of a pound per fan.
As Game 5 of the American League Divisional Series reached nearly two full baseball games, a 15-inning thriller that resulted in a Mariners win, the amount of garbage generated in the park was roughly 20 tons.
Wilke noted that every item of garbage is hand-sorted by a team of five to six employees. Many more workers scour the stadium to gather garbage and transport it to the recycling center. In total, approximately 120 employees clean up T-Mobile Park after each game.
The entire process, including sorting, cleaning, and hauling the garbage out of T-Mobile Park, can finish as late as 3 a.m., depending on whether the game concludes at the average time of 8 p.m. following an evening start time.
Earlier in the team’s season, half as much garbage is expected due to smaller crowd sizes, but Wilke claimed that as the excitement in the park builds toward the end of the year, fans eat, drink, and celebrate even more, according to The Seattle Times.
Wilke likened the amount of trash at T-Mobile Park to what would be generated by a large concert, although the Mariners played 81 home games this season, making the cleanup effort much more often.
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