Alex Sayre
2:31 pm.
4.9.09
The business of sports in the united states is huge with billions upon billions of dollars going into advertising, paying athletes, coaches, managers, stadiums, travel expenditures, food and drink related business and the list can Go-All-The-Way (pause for 1 second at each dash for full text to voice effect). All these things cause for a huge expenditure in energy keeping the stadiums lit and the effect of traveling long distances from North Carolina to Michigan to have a blowout of a NCAA championship. Ahem. The stadiums in particular are a large energy burner with facilities from air-conditioning, lighting and bathrooms.
The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) council is an organization that encourages and assists in projects which create green buildings which save huge chunks of energy in comparison to modern everyday buildings. The Phillips Arena in Atlanta is the first NBA & NHL sized stadium to be labeled within LEED standards for an environmentally energy saving green building. These buildings significantly reduce carbon emissions and projections reveal that if the some 5.1 million public commercial buildings underwent this transformation something like $160 billion dollars would be saved. Wow! That’s plenty. That’s enough dollars to cover 2000 football fields! (not accurate).
The US Green Building Council (USGBC) is a nonprofit organization which advocates these energy saving efficient buildings which not only save the environment but can also greatly improve work space and the clean maintenance of those buildings. One of these buildings of an average size emit 2.7 million pounds less bad gas (No, gases like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury) which is equivalent to planting 378 trees. Wow! That’s a lot of trees! Almost enough trees to make 20,000 baseball bats! (not accurate). The prices building and maintaining these buildings vary and are definitely more expensive but not to the cost of the environment.
2 comments:
I like how you left the cost difference out until the very, very end. Interesting how we're in the middle of a time that the last thing anybody wants to do is spend any extra money on anything, but everybody also wants to save the planet.
What will they choose???
Of course it's going to cost, but it will certainly have an even larger cost in terms of the environment & potentially even lives later. It's easy, just do the right thing.
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