The NFL, also known as the National Football League, wanted to make sure this year’s Superbowl Sunday was the most “green friendly” championship football game ever. Environmentally focused plans for the event included a strategy for collecting food scraps and food waste generated at and around the stadium for use in composting and powering biodiesel generators. Additionally, stadium grounds managers ave been planting several new trees around the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to help reduce carbon emissions.

Close to eight tons of food scraps and organic waste material were generated during the Super Bowl, and this year, instead of disposing of the waste in landfills, a giant compactor was used to collected the material for transporting to a regional food waste processing facility. The compost generated will be used by the stadium for landscaping purposes.
In addition, the stadium also wanted to recycling all waste cooking oil from its on-site food stands and restaurants for re-process as biodiesel fuel that could be used to power the generators that supply energy to Super Bowl Boulevard, a large recreation area near the stadium that features entertainment. The expectation is that the collected waste oil will contribute up to a third of the total power needed to supply the sports complex during a game.

After the game was completed, the NFL also donated all fabric signage, totaling several miles, to area nonprofits groups for re-sale and re-use.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If your city or town has recreation areas and popular sports fields, take a look at how waste materials generated are disposed of. Is your town paying to send everything to a landfill or are your city administrators being smart and looking at ways to save taxpayer dollars by re-use and recycling?