We have a chock-full GSB News and Notes column to start your week.

• Unifi, one of the world’s leading innovators in the manufacture of recycled performance fibers, recently became the Founding Sustainability Partner of Pac-12 Team Green. One important feature of the partnership is that sustainability-themed content will appear on the Pac-12 Networks. 

• Footage of old cycling races and marathons is being used by researches to document climate change. 

• And, in a follow up to a June GSB story, the Chicken Pot Pie Rats, a team of three brilliant eighth graders from a middle school in the San Diego area, were unable to win the school’s second straight Junior Solar Sprint (model car race) National Championship due to a technical issue with the solar panels atop their vehicle. 

 
UNIFI TO HELP PAC-12 NETWORKS #COVERGREENSPORTS 
This seemingly ordinary snippet in the Pac-12 Conference’s recent press release announcing its new sustainability partnership with Unifi caught my eye: “Unifi will…work with the Pac-12* and Pac-12 Networks on creating custom content and media assets to feature sustainability programs.”
A partner helping to improve recycling rates at a stadium or arena? That is ordinary in the Green-Sports world these days.
A partner funding sustainability-themed ads or public service announcements (PSAs) on Pac-12 Networks, with its 19 million subscribers^ — that is EXTRAORDINARY!
The announcement that Unifi∞ will help Pac-12 Networks #CoverGreenSports was light on details. A spokesman for the conference said plans for the sustainability content — subject matter, frequency, etc — will be developed over the next couple of months. The ads/PSAs will likely go live in late-September/early-October, as the Pac-12 football season moves into high gear.
 

Pac-12 and Unifi executives announce their Team Green partnership (Photo credit: Unifi)

 
Long-time readers know that GreenSportsBlog believes the Green-Sports world is transitioning from its 1.0 version (greening the games at the stadium, arena, road race, etc.) to its 2.0 iteration (reaching the far greater number of people who consume sports via TV, phone, internet with sustainability messaging).
Kudos to Unifi, Pac-12 Networks and the Pac-12 for demonstrating much-needed Green-Sports 2.0 leadership. When will more corporations and college and/or pro sports leagues follow Unifi and the Pac-12? Stay tuned.
 
FOOTAGE OF OLD SPORTS EVENTS HELPS SCIENTISTS TRACK CLIMATE CHANGE 
Here’s a new and welcome aspect of the Green-Sports world: Scientists using sports to document climate change.
Marlene Cimons, writing in the July 18th issue of Popular Science, tells the story of how climate scientist and cycling fan Pieter De Frenne observed changes to the landscape while watching the Tour of Flanders over many years in his native Belgium.
“[De Frenne] noticed startling changes in the trees and shrubs framing many of the cobbled streets that have been part of the course for years,” reported Cimons. “The landscape had morphed from totally bare to lush with greenery.”
Sports events have, of course, been documented in photos, on film and on video for over a century. Cycling and marathons are ideal for documenting climate change: They’re often held at the same time every year, over the same courses.
That is the case with the one-day Tour of Flanders, which was first contested in 1913. The annual cycling road race always takes place on the first Sunday in April. De Frenne — a scientist in the forest and nature lab in Ghent University’s department of the environment — and his colleagues compared images of the same trees and plants on 12 hills along the route between 1980 and 2016.  They discovered that trees surrounding the course are budding earlier.
According to Andy Furniere in the July 23 issue of Flanders Today, “Before 1990, the trees rarely had leaves during the race. But after 1990, the trees – largely magnolia, hawthorn, hornbeam and birch – were full of leaves. The researchers said that the pictorial evidence suggests that the average temperature in these areas has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1980.”
The impacts are significant: Trees getting their leaves earlier in the year lead to shadows being created for a longer period of time. Some flowers thus don’t get enough sun to bloom which negatively effects insects and birds.
 

AFTER: The April 2018 Tour of Flanders in full flower (Photo credit: Tim DeWaale/Visit Flanders)

BEFORE: The April, 1990 Tour of Flanders. Trees are much less lush than in the 2018 edition, which reflects the cooler temperatures of that time (Photo credit: Graham Watson)

 
De Frenne told Cimons that the historical visual documentation of sports events like Tour of Flanders, “can be an invaluable, still underexploited resource for climate change research and other types of biological research.”
 
 
CHICKEN POT PIE RATS START STRONG, FALL VICTIM TO SOLAR PANEL FAILURE AT JUNIOR SOLAR SPRINT CHAMPIONSHIPS
Last month, GreenSportsBlog featured the story of the Chicken Pot Pie Rats, a team of three eighth graders from the Joan MacQueen Middle School in Alpine, CA — about 30 miles east of San Diego — who race model cars powered by small solar panels atop the roofs. The team sought to defend the school’s 2017 Junior Solar Sprint National Championship at the 2018 finals in Atlanta against over 100 teams from all over the United States.
Here’s a report on how the Pie Rats made out from team member Ronan Eddie, his dad Patrick and team volunteer Chris Loarie:
“The Pie Rats recorded the fastest time in the preliminary time trials…and were the number one seed going into the 16-team finals. Before the finals started, we put the car out in the sun and tried to run it and it was not functioning like it normally would — definitely not like it was during local trials and the national time trials in Atlanta. We ran a test with a voltmeter to look at the voltage output and it gave its full voltage. The symptoms of the car’s sluggishness pointed to a problem in the solar panel sill or possibly a problem with the motor.”
“When we were walking back to the classroom after field testing, the light hit the panel just right and we noticed a fine scratch on the cover of the panel. Close inspection revealed that the plastic cover was not scratched. Rather, the actual wafer under the plastic protective cover had a crack in it and that caused the circuit to fail.
“It is a bit hard to swallow that the car made it through many local races and track testing, made a cross country trip in a special plastic box that was put into a foam protective carrying case, and made it through the time trials and recorded an unbelievable time.  Then it was turned over to the race officials for overnight storage and when it was returned, it would not function.”
To be clear, Loarie does not want to imply there was malicious intent on the part of the event organizers. He surmises the damage to the panel was the result of an unfortunate accident.
Despite the disappointment, Loarie sees the bright side: “We know we are creating dominant designs and will use this experience to educate future [Joan MacQueen Middle School] teams.”
 

Members of the Chicken Pot Pie Rats (from left to right) Josh Handley, Chase Kingston, and Ronan Eddie, along with Josh’s and Ronan’s dads at the 2018 Junior National Sprint Championships in Atlanta (Photo credit: Chicken Pot Pie Rats)

* The Pac-12 is one of the leading collegiate sports conferences (leagues) in the USA. Its member schools are Arizona, Arizona State, Cal-Berkeley, Colorado-Boulder, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington, Washington State

^ Pac-12 Networks subscriber data per SNL Kagan, 2018

∞ Unifi, through its REPREVE® brand, has transformed more than 12 billion plastic bottles into recycled fiber for new apparel, footwear, and more

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