The US Open You Didn’t See

One month ago, 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin sat in a studio with a production team and Rita Garza, senior director of corporate communications for the U.S. Tennis Association.

USTA employed volunteers to assist in educating tennis fans on what to recycle, directing them to the proper bin. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

Donning a tailored suit and his signature plastered comb-over, Baldwin recorded 30 seconds of improv dripping with the refreshingly arrogant sarcasm that made him famous.

But his on-screen partner wasn’t an Emmy-winning comedienne that graced the cover of Vogue’s March issue and essentially made thick-framed glasses cool again.

In this scene, Baldwin joked alongside a less familiar…er, face – a tennis ball puppet with skinny lips and googly eyes.

“Remember when I used to be dignified?” Baldwin jokingly asked Garza, referring to the commercial’s so-cheesy-you-can’t-help-but-laugh plotline.

“Dignified is so overrated,” Garza replied.

This year’s promotional shorts were unlike Baldwin’s former cuts. These commercials had to be memorable because they were more than just advertisements – they were calls to action.

Match made in heaven

Three years ago, the USTA took on the tall order of greening one of the largest tennis event in the world.

Chefs at the US Open compost all food scraps during meal preparation. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

Garza – alongside Joe Crowley, senior director, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center Facility Operations, and Bina Indelicato, CEO, Eco Evolutions – came together with a team of double-duty employees that started a movement from scratch.

But unlike other sustainable sports projects in the past, this team had just two weeks to influence a dyed-in-the-wool tennis fan base and a group of the world’s most sought-after vendors.

In the search for the most efficient and worthwhile environmental endeavors, USTA turned to Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The most iconic cultural events of our time are changing their practices,” Hershkowitz said. “Athletes and entertainers are the biggest role models. [Greening] sports is new, and people relate to it in a whole different way.”

While consumer education is important for any eco-endeavor, it’s a hard sell, especially for sports fans. In 2007, Hershkowitz suggested starting from the back-end of the event with the vendors.

“Ninety-five percent of a product’s impact happens before you open the package,” Hershkowitz said in reference to the intensive amount of natural resources used to create common game-day goods like aluminum cans, plastic cups and glass bottles.

USTA stores the used tennis ball canisters in a back room to be recycled. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

“We’re not going to change Earth with philanthropy alone,” he continued. “We have to out-compete the bad stuff. We have to make [sustainability] trendy and profitable.”

The question was if the US Open’s long-time vendors and investors would be open to these changes demanded by the USTA.

“I’ve never seen a larger group of overachievers in my life,” Garza said of the world-class companies. “This forced them to actually look at their own products.”

USTA started with the basics: reducing and recycling. The organization found that simple modifications made large impacts.

For example, the 2.4 million napkins distributed in the general concession area now contain 90 percent post-consumer waste. Hybrid vehicles are 55 to 60 percent of the Mercedes-Benz player transportation fleet—an increase from 40 percent in 2009. And the USTA will recycle approximately 18,000 to 20,000 Wilson tennis ball cans.

Furthermore, recycling receptacles are featured on 100 percent of the grounds, compared to 15 percent in the 2008 pilot program.

700,000 lessons

But 2010’s success didn’t come without its lessons. In its beginning stages, the composting program is still a budget-drain, and the USTA has barely scratched the surface when it comes to energy reduction (due to the 10-year-old facility, the USTA is in talks to make major energy innovations within the next 3-5 years).

"These tennis ball cans used to be such a problem at one time," Garza said, laughing as she held one of the cans. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

“On the operational side, it has been a relentless learning process because the supply chain just isn’t there yet,” said Crowley. “But the beauty in collaboration is that everyone gets to do the right thing. It may not be perfect, but it’s getting there.”

Many of these hang-ups extend from the US Open’s biggest impediment: time constraint.

“It’s like doing a double-header in the World Series two weeks in a row,” Garza explained of the event that draws more than 700,000. “You have to make it better every year; it’s a constant moving target.”

But with these hang-ups comes lessons that aren’t only valuable for the USTA, but for the sports industry as a whole. For example, the green team found that, for events of this size, recycling is only successful when bins are distributed on one-to-one ratio with trash cans.

“We starting finding that the farther away the recycling bin was from the trash can, the less recyclables were in the bags,” Garza explained. “Some people think recycling is a ‘done deal,’ but that’s not the case at all.”

In fact, one of USTA’s biggest projects has been the recycling of the 20,000-plus Wilson tennis ball canisters. While recycling plastic may sound simple enough, these cans are comprised of two types of plastic resins and aluminum, making the process more complicated.

As for the tennis balls themselves, USTA employees the second “R”: reuse. The 60,000 Wilson tennis balls used during the US Open are reused for NTC programming and then donated to other community/youth programs.

Next year is now

At press time, the US Open still has one more week of matches left, but the planning for next year’s events is already underway.

“This is the third year [of environmental efforts], and there’s no other league that has better incorporated these ideas than the USTA,” said Hershkowitz. “It has embedded the idea of environmental intelligence. It’s now one of the premier eco-sports events in the world.”

For now, the team is staying the course and not letting slip the big accomplishments it has already made. While the USTA sets aside an allotted amount of funding annually for the green efforts, Hershkowitz said the cost continues to grow. For 2011, the USTA will focus on monetizing recycling, increasing partnerships and decreasing costs.

But according to Garza, no matter the expense, the organization doesn’t consider the environment an option, but rather a priority.

“The senior executives ask me, ‘Are we as green as we can be?’,” Garza said. “We are now, but next year that may not be the case [...] But I will say that, for us, green is always on the agenda.”

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