NASCAR Goes Green

NASCAR Goes Green

This morning was a first. I know anyone who knows me and knows my birdcage is lined almost exclusively with the sports section (of the newspaper) would've been shocked. I was (and still am) pretty surprised myself. Up in the upper right hand corner of the front page I read, Solar power to mulch, NASCAR races ahead with green initiative-Sports C-1, and thus I actually opened the paper to the sports section first (that in itself is amazing) and read about how NASCAR is going green. Other than an occasional glance at the baseball stats (to commiserate over the Cubbies standings) I rarely unfold the sports section at all and this morning I checked it out before the Sudoku or Ann Landers (now named officially Annie’s Mailbox but forever Ann Landers to me). And I discovered that NASCAR, which has never held much interest for me before, is actually doing a pretty comprehensive job focusing on recycling and as they like to say, they are going full throttle. There’s a 25 acre solar power farm at the Pocono Raceway and most of crashed race cars are salvaged or recycled. No other professional sport recycles more. Daytona International Speedway alone collected seven tons of empty cans, 99 tons of cardboard, 23 tons of steel, and 28 tons of mixed materials and kept them out of landfills last year. This year already NASCAR and its corporate partners have planted enough trees to offset the emissions created at all their events and are committed to planting 90 more at each NASCAR facility this year.

Wow, I may start reading the sports section more often!