What happens to all the Super Bowl signage after the big game sweeps through Phoenix?
PHOENIX - There’s a lot of trash created from the Super Bowl and there's a goal this year to make this the greenest Super Bowl yet, but how?
The playoffs haven’t even begun, but downtown Phoenix is transforming into Super Bowl's home as the big game will be played right here in the Valley at State Farm Stadium.
It's not the first time hosting the big game in Arizona. In fact, the signs from eight years ago can still be seen in the Valley if you look closely.
Walking the Pierson Street Garden in downtown Phoenix, you can see mother nature. Plants and veggies growing under the Phoenix sun, but a look from above shows it’s covered essentially years-old trash.
"There is so much stuff that comes in for the Super Bowl that they don’t want back," says Tom Waldeck with Keep Phoenix Beautiful.
He says after a Super Bowl, there is a monumental task to spare the landfills and find new uses for everything left behind. During the last time Phoenix hosted, he says there were seven miles of corporate signage left behind.
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Those old signs are now at the Pierson Street Garden faded and tattered.
You can see a Coca-Cola ad, Ford, anything and everything that advertises – and there was lots of it in 2014.
"It was like the trifecta because we had the Super Bowl, college football playoffs, and Final Four and everybody has this stuff," Waldeck said.
There are even campaign signs holding back the compost.
And, it’s not just this community garden, it’s every one of them.
Waldeck says if you go to any community garden and Arizona and don't see Super Bowl remnants, there will be after February.
Wraps are already covering sky scrappers downtown. Many more signs and tarps are headed to our streets.
Waldeck says they’ll find a way to reuse more than 90% of Super Bowl trash, and some of it will cover the gardens of our city.
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