If you’re a baseball fan—or, more specifically, a Seattle Mariners fan—you now have something else to cheer: the team has started selling peanuts in fully compostable packaging. Last week, the first 10,000 fans to arrive at the game against the Red Sox received a free packet of peanuts in the new packaging, developed by BASF. Adds Business Green:

Using the packaging at the game was part of the Mariners' ongoing environmental efforts, which have put the team on course to divert 85 per cent of their waste from landfill, up from 12 per cent in 2006.

The Mariners, who are part of the Green Sport Alliance, aim to divert as much as 90% of their waste from the landfill, but have hit a few snags along the way.

"All of our service ware is already compostable, but snack food bags have been one of the biggest barriers preventing us from getting to our goal," said [Scott Jenkins, the team's vice president of operations]. "Flexible packaging made with BASF biopolymers could represent the holy grail of greening for our waste stream."

The BASF multilayer packaging comprises film resins, inks, adhesives and primers. No word though on whether the snack packs ran into the “noise” problem that plagued Frito-Lay’s attempt at compostable SunChips packaging back in 2010. UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that this was actually a one-time promotion to introduce the new prototype packaging to the snack food industry. It's still something to cheer, though!