Goin’ green: Women’s Final Four organizers honored with highest sustainability award

Say what you will about the masses of people, traffic, noise, and lines that the Women’s Final Four created in the city but the way in which it was handled by organizers is award-winning, literally.

The Columbus Organizing Committee that worked the Women’s Final Four has been honored with the Evergreen award—the most highly-regarded responsibility and sustainability achievement for a sporting event.

Columbus is the first host of the Women’s Final Four to win this award.

According to Columbus Business First, a few earth-friendly measure the committee took during the Women’s Final Four include:

Collected over 300 pounds of lightly-used sporting equipment donations
Recycled over 100 pallets
Planted over 100 trees
Donated nearly 2,000 pounds of unused food and beverages
Restored a water footprint of 270,416 gallons used at Nationwide Arena during the duration of the tournament
Offset 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide created by the arena during the duration of the tournament

To commemorate the award, NCAA and Columbus officials planted a sugar maple tree in Mcferson Commons.

Yay earth!

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