I’ve watched the Super Bowl—for the game and the commercials—every year as long as I can remember. I am a sports fan, and Super Bowl Sunday is a great reason to cozy up with friends, 3-bean chili and a hot toddy. (Thanks for the recipe, Vanessa!) The event is not usually something you think of as being eco-friendly.
However, this year’s Super Bowl is being touted as the “greenest Super Bowl ever.” So green they even set up a New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee Environmental Program.
Here are the top 5 ways organizations are pitching in to make the big game sustainable.
- Planting a record number of trees. In the months leading up to the Super Bowl, the NFL and New Orleans Super Bowl Environmental Committee partnered with Hike for KaTREEna to plant 7,000 trees in and around New Orleans (over 100,000 were lost during Hurricane Katrina). This breaks the previous record by a Super Bowl host city (Dallas with 5,000) and, on Super Saturday, will culminate in 20,000 trees that have been planted as part of Hike for KaTREEna’s efforts to re-green NoLa.
- Energy-efficient lighting for players and fans. The Superdome has undergone a $336 million dollar upgrade since Hurricane Katrina. That includes more than 26,000 high-efficiency LED lights on the dome’s exterior. When operating in one color, the system uses only 10 kilowatts of electricity. And no bulbs should need to be replaced until 2057. In addition, Green Light New Orleans and Super Bowl volunteers have spent the week leading up to the big game installing 80,000 free CFL light bulbs in the homes of local New Orleans residents.
- Committing to carbon offsets. Fans compete for prizes in the Geaux Green Game. Pick your team, commit to a number of eco-friendly actions for 2013 and get entered into a drawing. So far, football fans have pledged to save over 22,240,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere—the equivalent of removing 1,984 cars from the road for a year! I made the pledge through my hometown Philadelphia Eagles who currently rank last in their division for carbon offsets. Philly fans just can’t get a break. Super Bowl fans can offset their game day travel by choosing one of three projects from which to purchase credits (including a forest conservation initiative and a methane-capture project). Local utility company, Entergy Corp., will match the offsets dollar for dollar.
- Repurposing materials. REpurposingNOLA is a woman-owned, triple bottom line New Orleans company that uses reclaimed materials to create designer products. Super Bowl XLVII carpeting, banners and signage will be donated to this and other companies for repurposing efforts. REpurposingNOLA has already debuted a cool 2013 ECO-SPORT bag made form Super Bowl XLIV banners.
- Sharing the grub. Second Harvest Food Bank is collaborating with the Super Bowl Host Committee to collect excess prepared foods from 50 Super Bowl events to be hosted in the New Orleans area this week. Collected food will be delivered to soup kitchens and shelters.
2013 ECO-SPORT from REpurposingNOLA
Thanks for the link