Philadelphia Eagles set the bar high for sports industry

One of the last industries you think of for promoting sustainability is the sports world. Players and fans flying and driving all over to attend games in large air-conditioned venues with lots of lights, huge amounts of concession stand food in disposeable containers.

One team is stepping out and taking the lead towards sustainability, the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL).

In 2003, the Philadelphia Eagles owners, Jeffrey and Christina Lurie, decided they wanted to make the Eagles more environmentally responsible.  They had the insight to see that they could make a difference, and set the team apart from others with a program called “Go Green!”

The Go Green! initiative focuses around some key initiatives: renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, recycling and waste reduction, reforestation (tree planting), and procurement decisions.

To start with, the Eagles offset their carbon emissions for the 2010 season through the GoZero program, which is managed by the Conservation Fund organization. They had been working their way up to 100% offset over the years. In 2009, the Eagles ran 100% of their operations on wind and solar, a small portion of which comes from their solar array at the NovaCare Complex, which produced 12,757 kilowatt-hours (kWh). In addition, they have cut their stadium’s annual electricity use by nearly 50% since 2004 through energy conservation and efficiency improvements.

The Eagles also created the country’s first Renewable Energy Employee Benefit Program, which encourages all full-time Eagles employees to purchase renewable energy credits (REC’s) from Delaware Valley region energy. The program compensates employees by paying the difference in price between current and renewable energy. In 2009, more than half of the organization’s eligible employees took advantage of this program.

In 2008 and 2009, the Eagles offset 100% of the greenhouse gas generated by team travel (air, bus, train and hotel) through tree planting. Their tree planting efforts take place at Eagles Forest, a 6.5-acre site at Neshaminy State Park in Bensalem, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It contains more than 4,000 trees and shrubs, including over 150 trees that have been purchased by Eagles fans. They are also sponsoring tree plantings in Louisiana’s Lake Ophelia National Wildlife Refuge in Marksville, Louisiana, and helping with restoration projects in that area due to the recent oil spill in the gulf.

In 2009, they launched a composting program, in conjunction with their cafeteria service provider. They capture unwanted and disposed of food, and utilize compostable or post-consumer recycled content for utensils, plates and cups. In addition, the cooking oil is sent out for conversion to bio-diesel. They are also using environmentally preferable cleaning products to clean the food service and facilities areas. Along with a strong recycling program that has been in-place since 2003, they are getting very close to achieving a zero-waste operation.

In the office area, they have also made strides in reducing paper usage. They reduced newsletter publications by 36 tons of paper by moving more of the publications to online. They also moved to a digital media guide, saving more than 200 trees. They also increased the post-consumer content of the following items: game day programs, office printer paper, business cards, memo pads, invoices, staff handbooks, stadium credentials, facial tissue, hand towels, toilet paper, stadium maps, event staff birthday cards, tickets, cardstock and certain envelopes.

The efforts continue with the cheerleaders. The 2010-2011 Eagle Cheerleaders calendar was the first in the league to be printed on post-consumer recycled paper. The 38 cheerleaders are wearing eco-friendly bikinis made from organic cotton or recycled plastic bottles, with accessories (earrings, necklaces and bracelets) made from recycled materials such as CD's and computer chips. Additionally, 10% of the calendar sales will go to the Gulf Restoration Network to help protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf for future generations.

Finally, one of the key activities that got the effort moving was the Carbon Neutral game, which took place in 2005 between the St. Louis Rams and the Eagles. The teams worked with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), StopGlobalWarming.org, and NativeEnergy to offset the energy usage for a single game. They agreed to use clean energy from a Native American wind project in the Midwest, and energy from a Pennsylvania dairy farm methane project.

They determined that a single game produced 58 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. The majority of the energy during the game came from heating the dome (wintertime in St. Louis), and running the huge lights during the game.  However, fans, media, and teams traveling by air, bus, and car to the game had a much greater impact. They estimated that travel took up more than 10,900 tons of CO2 – about 99% of the event's total carbon footprint.

Hats off the Eagles, and especially Christina Lurie, for her drive and determination to make this happen! I hope that other teams pay attention, and start competing with them in their sustainability efforts, not just on the football field. 

Learn more about the Eagles' Go Green! program >>>

Good movie about where electricity comes from

We attended a green expo today, and one of the sessions was a 1-hour video called "Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-Energize America", which was made in 2007. I hadn't even heard of it before, but I was very impressed with it.

The movie, created by Jeff Barrie, explores the source of our electricity and the problems caused by energy production including mountain top removal, childhood asthma and global warming. He walks through step-by-step how you can reduce your energy usage in your home and learn more about "green" renewable energy. 

One of the better parts of the movie was the discussion about energy conservation that many cities have taken on. Instead of building new power plants to address their increasing energy demands, the city of Austin, and the state of California spent a fraction of the power plant construction costs on education and rebates. In Iowa, we are having the discussion right now about building a new nuclear plant to meet our increasing energy demand, so that really hit home for me.

You can also download a classroom exercise for grade school kids, that corresponds with the movie
http://www.kilowattours.org/curriculum/KilowattOurs-Challenge-Activity.pdf

You can learn more about the movie at http://www.kilowattours.org/

Crete renewable energy makes up for shortcomings

My wife and I got a chance to vacation to the island of Crete, the biggest island in the Greek Isles, located in the Mediterranean Sea. The weather was incredible, the scenery was mountainous and amazing, and the water was warm and clear. The local people were very friendly and spoke excellent English, so it made the trip very enjoyable.

What I didn't anticipate was the amount of renewable energy available in Crete. We saw many applications of green technology.

Almost every home had a passive solar water heater system on the roof, which means they aren't spending money on heating their water. With the amazing weather we experienced, it seems like a no-brainer to implement that everywhere in the Mediterranean.

We saw at least 100 wind turbines on the mountain tops, and probably 5-6 different wind farms (on the east side of the island only). It was pretty impressive. The good thing is that they didn't need huge towers to get them way up in the air, since the mountain was already high enough for constant wind. That probably keeps the costs down.

We also passed by a solar photovoltaic farm, with maybe 10-20 large panels. It was hard to get a picture of it due to the road we were travelling on, but it looked very impressive.

A couple observations about Europe:

1) they limited the use of ice. Every time we ordered soda or a water, we got 2-3 cubes, which melted quickly. I'd consider that a savings on the use of energy to generate all the ice cubes, even though it might not help the customer satisfaction for those of us used to having a drink that has too much ice.

2) Most hotels had a switch that required the room key, in order to turn on the electricity. This forced you to turn everything off when you left the room, by removing the key from the device. The only downside was when we were trying to recharge something (cell phone, laptop, etc), we could only do it when we were physically there. Overall, I like the idea, and would like to see it expand to the US.

I was looking for a website that summarized the renewable activity in Crete, but was unsuccessful. Maybe it's available on a website written in Greek. If anyone can find one that talks about the number of wind farms and turbines, solar arrays, solar water heaters, etc in Crete, I'd appreciate it.
Now to the negatives. In general, I did not see many places to recycle. We actually had to save up all our stuff, and take it to the Scandinavian resort up the hill, where they had many different bins all over the place for recycleables.

It might help the second problem as well, which is the amount of trash lying around. Along every street and highway you could see trash, bottles, cans, and many other items that shouldn't be there. If your primary economy is based upon tourism, I would think that cleanliness would be a primary focus.

Fortunately, most of the beaches were trash-free, except for the last beach we stopped at, on our way to the airport.

As you can see from this photo, it looks amazing, so we stopped right away to check it out. Crystal clear waters, cool rock formations, and ocean as far as you can see.

However, when you get up close, this is what we saw everywhere.

Trash bags, food packaging wrappers, styrofoam, plastic silverware, and other small plastic pieces that would surely be eaten by marine life. It was really gross. I would only get into the water up to my waist, and even then, I was not comfortable. We grabbed as many large objects as we could find, but it would take an army to clean it up.

I don't know how it got there. I don't even blame the locals, since it could be coming from the cruise ships or tourists. However, I would not recommend anyone go to that particular beach (Voulisma Beach) because of the trash we saw. This needs to be addressed right away. To have a beautiful island ruined by litter and trash would be a shame.

Iowa wind farm impressive up close

I got a pleasant surprise driving up to a family vacation. We drove through Charles City, Iowa, and ran smack into a huge wind farm.

Mid-American Energy built a total of 50 huge turbines, which produce about 75,000 KW of electricity. The wind farm was constructed in early 2008.

We also saw an even larger windfarm on I-35, near the Minnesota/Iowa border. I think it is called "Top of Iowa" (there are maybe three different "sites" within the same area). Started almost 10 years ago (built in 2001), it contains a total of 147 turbines.

I couldn't believe that it's been that long in service. Wind farms were the last thing on my mind in 2001, so hats off to those who got this farm up and running back then.

It's pretty awesome to see so many of them at once. Some of my family described it as "alien" or "spaceship" looking. If you have the opportunity to visit a wind farm, it's worth it. Just to see the landscape lined with rotating turbines, and to see how large they are. It's also cool to know that Iowa is one of the leaders in wind power in the US, and that each turbine is helping meet our energy needs, without pollution.

For more information, visit this List of Iowa Wind Farms

Review of Solio Solar Powered Charger

I received the much-anticipated Solio charger as a gift recently, and I couldn't wait to try it out. The thought of having my cell phone taken "off the grid" was pretty cool.



When I received the package, I was impressed that it came in a reused Motorola cell phone box. They could have chosen a fancy packaging with their logo out of virgin materials, but instead chose to keep with their green image.

Since I have an iPhone, I had to order a special attachment for the charger. When it arrived, it took me a while to figure out that I had to use my computer USB adapter for the iPhone, along with their adapter cable, in order to get things to connect together properly. I made a call to customer service, and they were able to set me straight. The instructions provided were mainly pictures of what to do, which usually are sufficient, but i kept looking for some written instructions for specific issues like this one. Once I got the pieces aligned, I was able to start capturing the sun for my own personal use.

You need to first charge your Solio via the computer first, before charging your device. I fully charged the Solio, but had trouble getting the charge transferred to my iPhone. Turns out you have to turn off your cell phone completely to have the device begin charging back up. That wasn't very clear either. Finally, some success! I was able to charge my phone from the Solio. Next step, getting a charge from the sun, instead of my computer!

I work in an office building that doesn't have any nearby windows, so I used the cool suction cup feature to set the charger on my car windshield while I was at work. I work in Florida, so sunshine is not a problem. After work was done, I expected to find a partial charge on the device, but was disappointed to find the same charge level as when I left it.

What happened?

Turns out the Solio likes to have a direct sunlight right at the device, otherwise it doesn't show a red charge light, and therefore is not charging. Maybe I am unfamiliar with solar technology, but I figured you could just lay the charger on the dashboard, and any sunlight, direct or not, would get captured. Since a full charge requires 12-24 hours of direct sun, i've been unable to get a full charge. I think I would probably need to go out to my car every couple hours and adjust the device so it has the best position to capture sunlight. Maybe I need to park my car in a certain angle so there are no shadows or nearby cars to block the sunlight. I think I need to completely rethink my parking situation at work.



Bottom line, I so wanted this device to be an easy way to avoid charging my phone with electricity, but it has been really frustrating so far. The company gets an A for effort, but I would rate it a C for execution so far. I haven't given up hope yet, but I've been pretty disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high to begin with. Look for updates later, if I find success with this device. If I can find a spot that gets good sunlight most of the day (without leaving it outside, or on top of my car), then that might take care of my main issues.

Oat: The new renewable energy?

I saw this mentioned on an environmental website the other day, and thought it was pretty cool, especially since I'm a former alum.

"According to a University of Iowa video, burning oat hulls - instead of just coal - saves about $1 million per year for the school. It gets the oat hulls from a Quaker Oats facility, which is just a short distance away in Cedar Rapids, IA. By 2010, the university plans to reduce its energy consumption by 10 percent and use renewable sources to generate 15 percent of all energy on campus."

There is also a short video developed by the University of Iowa to describe the "oat hulls" used to generate power.