From the Associated Press via the Detroit News and Free Press
DETROIT (AP) -- The National Football League says it plans to plant acres of trees in metropolitan Detroit to offset carbon emissions caused by traffic generated by next year's Super Bowl.
NFL environmental director Jack Groh says he will visit Detroit this spring to meet with the host committee, foresters and community groups about the tree planting. It will be similar to what the NFL sponsored at this year's Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.
"We have talked with the host committee and they're very excited about the possibility of working on a similar project in Detroit," Groh told the Detroit Free Press for a story Wednesday. He said planting could start as early as this fall.
By planting several acres of small trees, the NFL says it hopes to make the Super Bowl carbon-neutral, a strategy that encourages tree planting as a way to offset emissions that contribute to global warming.
"It's good to see at least a small segment of the business sector step up and start to address the impact" it has, James Clift, policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council, said of the NFL's plans.
Carbon-neutral projects are a small but growing blip on the environmental horizon.
American Forests in Washington, D.C., works with businesses that have taken a carbon-neutral pledge for certain products. Among them are snack maker Clif Bar, hair-care maker Paul Mitchell, the organic Earthbound Farm and carton producer Tetra Pak.
The carbon-neutral project is the latest addition to the NFL's 13-year-old environmental campaign, which tailors its plans to each host city's needs.
"The projects become a legacy of the Super Bowl," said Groh, who owns a communications and consulting company in Warwick, R.I.
In Florida, the NFL and a few contractors for the Super Bowl gave money to buy trees to the non profit Greenscape of Jacksonville, which organized a January planting of 1,000 trees on two acres at the University of North Florida.
Each longleaf pine tree, a native species, is 10 to 12 inches tall. Biology students studying carbon mitigation will use the planting as a laboratory.
About two acres of native trees remain to be planted. Some will be used on the campus at Florida Community College, Groh says.
The league also gave the money to buy 300 native seedlings, each about 2 feet tall, to Greenscape along with leftover fabric that had been used during the Super Bowl to camouflage fencing.
In Detroit, where mass transit is limited and personal vehicles are the rule, concern over carbon from emissions is one reason to plant trees. In addition, the imported emerald ash borer has killed up to 15 million ash trees within 20 quarantined counties, including those in southeast Michigan, in the past few years.
The non profit Greening of Detroit plants about 4,000 trees in the city each year and municipal forestry departments are also trying to replant.
