Play It Green

Here’s something to cheer about on Superbowl Sunday, other than the touching ascendancy of the New Orleans’ Saints. That is, if you can keep these facts straight. Here goes. NFL Films Studio, which produces a lot of football content and programming in lovely Mount Laurel, NJ, including superbowl content, will now be operating with a lot less carbon emissions. That’s thanks to Veolia Energy North America, which is taking over the “central facility” of the three-story, 200,000-square-foot studio complex, and providing its heating and cooling needs via energy-efficient chillers, a cooling tower and conventional boilers.

Also, off-green-topic, from a related press release… Did you know that NFL Films programming is aired in more than 200 countries? Who knew American football had that level of worldwide popularity and reach? But with compelling copy like this, how could it not? From the NFL Films website: “A super slow-motion sequence of a quarterback launching a spiral through a gray November sky. A receiver in full stride leaps to make a mid-air catch. A defender pulls him to the ground and brings the scene to an abrupt end. The plays happen instantly. The moments last a lifetime.” Pure poetry.

Also, fun facts! Games filmed 1965 season: 102. Games filmed 2005 season: 267.

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He’s got a heart of green. Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli has a foundation with the  motto “Our future is green.” Despite pictures of the larger-than-life NFLer on his (frankly, very well-executed) site clubbing with tight-dressed ladies and holding some sort of liquor named “bling,” the guy manages to come across as a down-to-earth do-gooder. He has a football camp in his home state of South Carolina where he’s big on promoting self-esteem and environmental awareness; said camp is being “greened” via recycling bins and reusable totes (it’s a start!) and he buys 40 seats per game to award to worthy kids. Also, he posed with Captain Planet (having received the “Superhero for the Earth” award). And that’s nothing if not ballsy. Also, read his blog, despite the fact that he hasn’t updated it in a year. Choice quote: “I was kinda upset because it didn’t stop raining all night, and I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

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Amid the clamor of health care debating and balloon boy (remember him?) speculating and Yankees-beating that’s been going on, there hasn’t been much room for talk of climate change legislation. To really make an impact, such legislation–be it cap-and-trade, in which companies buy and sell credits based on their polluting or the even better carbon tax in which companies (importing companies included!) pay a one-size-fits-all price for polluting–would have to be passed by December. It would need to predate the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen happening that month (known as COP15), but that’s really, really unlikely. Besides being distracted and all, Congress doesn’t like to feel rushed (except when it comes to bailing out Wall Street, in which case, rush away!) And neither, for that matter, do world nations. Since the U.S. is not going to step up, the COP15 nations are likely to do little more than lay the groundwork for a future global climate agreement. Because it’s not like time is running out or anything.

And Nike–a member of the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy–has  had enough of all the waffling. It, along with a bunch of other high profile companies like PG&E, Johnson&Johnson and Apple, resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors in late September after the Chamber decided that any global warming legislation would have to apply globally to all major emitters–an extension of Congressional power that would require changing the U.S. Constitution. And the Chamber has resisted any legislation that would bring additional costs to businesses. In its statement, Nike said: “We believe that on the issue of climate change the Chamber has not represented the diversity of perspective held by the board of directors.”

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Even when I was in high school, I didn’t invest much time or effort into the high school football games. And that includes one sad season of cheering at said games (I was the unsmiling cheerleader, which was not all that rebellious in hindsight). It didn’t help that I attended a Catholic school, whose team got their butts kicked by opposing public school teams. And then, in the past couple years, I discovered Friday Night Lights (I’ve read the book, and seen the movie, but I’m talking about the TV series). Suddenly the idea of a town so invested in this weekly football contest seemed almost enviable (what a simple thing to care about after all). It was all so unifying and important, and the people involved were not nearly as dumbed-down as I would have expected high school football fanatics to be.  I realize it’s written by scriptwriters and played by (optimistically attractive) actors, but it captures something true nonetheless. There’s something pure about high school football. It’s easy to care about, even if you don’t.

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Do you know what you’re wiping your butt with when you use the bathroom at Lincoln Financial Field–home of the Philadelphia Eagles? I do. It’s SCA Tissue! Last May, 3 former Eagles even helped the tissue company plant 15 trees—linebacker Gary Cobb, wide receiver Fred Barnett and wide receiver Mike Quick—in their 6.5-acre Eagles Forest in Neshaminy State Park in Pennsylvania. The football team’s forest was just established last year, all part of its larger Go Green initiative. Last year, they offset all their emissions by purchasing wind power. Anyway, SCA is into forest management, plants 3 trees for every one used in Europe and sells 100% recycled paper products. Now the Eagles’ stadium carries nothing but SCA’s Tork brand, meaning its more than 1 million visitors wipe their butts and mouths with tree-happy recycled content. Since 2004, the team has reduced its energy consumption by 30%, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

On a side note, “the Nest” would be a much cooler and greener name for the Eagles’ stadium in an alternate universe where corporate sponsorship was not necessary. Even cooler if it actually looked like the Bird’s Nest from the Beijing Olympics (which Citi Group is now converting to an entertainment and shopping center).

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Race cars push technology forward across the industry–and they are the cars people want to drive–so it makes sense that the race for greener cars should get tested on the racetrack. Green racing measures not only speed but energy use, emissions and use of alternative fuels—it’s a complex, 30-plus part scoring system designed by researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory so that racers don’t just drive slowly around the track to secure a win, defeating the entire purpose of auto racing. “These are still 200-mph cars. We clearly did not want to change racing. We didn’t want to make it boring and slow,” says John Glenn of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA and Department of Energy first promoted the idea of green racing.

This is the second year of the Michelin® GreenX® Challenge at the American Le Mans Series, the only race series in the world where all cars are allowed to race powered by alternative fuels like cellulosic E85, E10, clean sulfur-free diesel and gas-electric hybrids. Racers compete in four classifications including GT, which are modified street cars.

In this year’s race—Aug. 15-16—overall race winners Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud drove the de Ferran Motorsports Acura to lead an Acura sweep of the top three positions in both the race and in the Prototype category. “Hats off to Acura for not only creating a fantastic sports car but a car that can both win races and the Michelin GreenX Challenge,” said de Ferran. “This win at Mid-Ohio is like a home race for us. There are four Honda plants within a 50-mile radius of the track…”
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If you want an explanation of cap-and-trade, who better to ask then a former NBA cheerleader? Falling into the “Google discovery of the week” category is the Science Cheerleader, a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader named Darlene Cavalier who breaks down complicated science jargon and ideas into easily digestible explanations and attempts to get regular joes interested in contributing to science research and policy. Take cap-and-trade. The one-time cheerleader–beginning and ending in the early Charles Barkley-era ’90s–who also happens to be the former Global Manager for Senior Business Development for Walt Disney Publishing Worldwide, compares the idea of companies adhering to carbon emissions limits by buying or selling credits in a market-based system (in effect, rewarding the environmentally friendly and punishing the polluters until they get up to speed) to moms trading babysitting chips. More recently, she highlights the  efforts of EarthDive, an organization that aims to better document the effects of pollution, overfishing and trafficking in endangered species by engaging the millions of recreational scuba divers as “citizen scientists” to record their findings in the Global Dive Log.  Observations are mapped on the site, and provide real time data used to influence ocean policy worldwide. If it all sounds a little kooky, well, it’s always best to keep in mind the power of a pretty face–particularly with a brain attached.

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Don’t worry that the rich are not doing their small part to improve this otherwise polluted world. Why on July 30, the Atlanta Motorsports Park, described as a “private motorsports country club that offers a memebership for motorsports enthusiasts looking for executive level priveleges and amenities” (I’m reading this as “snobs who like cars, martinis and hookers”) is unveiling a new  Tilke track, that they claim will make the park the “only eco/green/sustainable-friendly motorsports park in the world.” The press release goes into no details about what particular aspects will make this new track (God, I love this term) “sustainable-friendly,” but even if it were made out of native plants, it’s a race track! It is a big, circular track for inefficient, souped-up race cars to barrel around, and around, and around.

I may be a bit sensitive here, what with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay’s What We Leave Behind, sitting on my bedside table. The authors make a similar point about the much-lauded William McDonough, the cradle-to-cradle designer behind the Ford Rouge Dearborn Truck Plant. The plant has a 10-acre “living roof,” the largest in the world. The site describes it as: “a glimpse of the transformative possibilities suggested by this new model for sustaining industry.” Jensen and McBay point out: it’s a massive truck factory. There is nothing even remotely “sustainable” about it. But don’t let these inconvenient truths dissuade you from joining the apparent hordes who are signing up for AMP’s exclusive offerings (they write that the club has sold $400,000 worth of memberships in the last 35 days)–including automatic faucets, a computer with internet access and “biometric fingerprint technology to access members only lounge.” Grey Goose models will be there, as will Atlanta Falcon’s wide receiver Michael Jenkins.

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Here’s a look at some numbers behind baseball–from number of balls (ha!) to number of fans, to pounds of glass recycled. Shamelessly lifted from E’s professional-sports-by-the-numbers list.

160,000. Estimated number of baseballs used per season, about 5-6 dozen balls per game.

30. Approximate number of professional baseball and football teams that use artificial/synthetic turf.

80 million. Number of spectators that Major League Baseball attracts each year.

10. Approximate number of the 30 MLB teams that have “gone green,” according to the EPA.

30 million. Number of hot dogs estimated to be sold at MLB parks in 2008.

5,500. Amount of construction waste, in tons, recycled from the building of Nationals Park.

480,000. Pounds of carbon emissions created by the 18-block-long, 100% recycled “green” carpet for the 2008 All-Star Game Red Carpet Parade (though the emissions were offset through carbon credits).

18. Tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions reduced at Fenway Park stadium by installing solar thermal panels on the roof behind home plate.

180. Number of recyclable containers placed throughout the Pittsburgh Pirates ballpark to encourage recycling of plastic bottles and cans.

870. Pounds of glass the Pittsburgh Pirates recycled in 2008. Also recycled were 5,913 pounds of aluminum cans; 33,547 pounds of plastic; 3.61 tons of mixed paper; 193 tons of baled cardboard and skids of catalogs and 20,100 gallons of used cooking oil.

724. Days it took to build the Washington Nationals’ new ballpark, which was the first green professional stadium in the U.S. and LEED-silver certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

30. Percentage of overall water consumption reduced by installing water-conserving plumbing fixtures, saving an estimated 3.6 million gallons of water per year at Nationals Park.

6,300. Number of square feet for a green roof above the Nationals’ concession/toilet area that minimizes roof heat gain.

590. Amount of solar panels installed at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park, providing up to 120 kilowatts of energy that will be connected to San Francisco’s power grid.

100,000. Amount, in dollars, AT&T Park saved on garbage disposal fees in one year through its recycling program.

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I was all ready to write about the cacophonous silence coming from baseball players in regards to their teams’ green initiatives. With a LEED-certified stadium (silver) from the Nationals, Minnesota seeking their own new LEED stadium (gold), solar panels at Fenway, green power purchasing and major recycling at the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, 95% recycled steel at the Mets new Citi Field, and on and on across Major League Baseball, it seemed like a major loss that no players were acting as the spokespeople, that the conduit between teams’ green initiatives and fans were essentially PR people.

That’s no longer the case. Chris Dickerson from the Cinncinati Reds and Jack Cassel from the Cleveland Indians launched We Play Green, an initiative to get athletes–many of them baseball players–to make green changes to their everyday routines. They’re looking to bring environmental awareness to the locker rooms, to get players to shed their umpteen water bottles in favor of refillable bottles, to recycle, and to leverage their clout to get stadiums and city officials to do more. Geoff Jenkins of the Phillies is on board (his “inspiring” message: “I still recycle”), as is the Red Sox’ Jacoby Ellsbury (”I think many people think plastic just kind of melts away”), Joe Smith of the Mets (who quotes Art Bushwald, “and Man created the plastic bag…”) and Mike Aviles of the Cleveland Indians (”Everyone can do something”). It’s a major step for baseball, to put influential faces in front of these environmental efforts with people who have a lot more clout with fans than the guys and gals in the head office.

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