Sports event reduces environmental impact For a single USC basketball game, one ton of carbon is released solely in light bulb usage. Now, imagine how much carbon is released from thousands of fans driving to and from the Colonial Life Arena, and include how much trash is produced during the games and the carbon released to break down the waste.
By combining all these factors, the actual impact that a single sporting event can have on our environment is astounding.
Hosting and planning a basketball game that has no negative impact on the environment seems an almost impossible task considering all those factors, but two students put their plan into action and achieved the first ever carbon-neutral sporting event at USC during the basketball game against Mississippi State on Wednesday night.
Co-founders of the Green Initiatives Committee Erin Fedewa and Nicole Rheinlander proposed the idea of a carbon-neutral sporting event to the Carolina Leadership Initiative for a grant to aid in offsetting the carbon footprint produced by fan and team travel, energy consumption and waste.
“People don’t realize how much of an impact one game actually has on our environment,” said Fedewa, a fourth-year marine science student.
According to Rheinlander, fan travel alone from Wednesday night’s game produced around 27 metric tons of carbon. The committee calculates the carbon emissions in a variety of ways, ranging from attendance to meter readings, and then neutralized the impact through carbon credits by planting trees and swapping standard light bulbs with energy-efficient ones around campus.
“It takes as many as thirty-five trees to neutralize the carbon produced just from the electricity used here tonight,” Fedewa said.
That electricity produced 3 tons of carbon emissions, Rheinlander said.
Fedewa and Rheinlander based their idea off the University of Florida, a school that achieved an entire carbon-neutral football season this past year.
“We saw with the [USC] athletic department there wasn’t anything going on at the time, while a lot of other schools had started taking the initiative to be more eco-friendly,” said Rheinlander, a fourth-year accounting and international business student.
“A major goal of the university and President Pastides is to promote leadership development among our students,” said Kevin Elliott, the director of Carolina Leadership Initiative said. “We are helping [students] to develop skills as they go forward in addressing problems that they are interested in.”
This year, the Carolina Leadership Initiative gave students 14 grants for projects ranging from diabetes education, dental education, after-school projects and the carbon-neutral game. They encourage applications from any students who have an idea for a project that benefits our community.
“We are trying to help students make a difference for the public good by addressing challenges like the environment, education and health care in our community,” Elliott said.