With the opening of Lincoln Financial Field in 2003, Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles founded the Go Green initiative with a vision to become a pioneer in sustainability. Four years into the project, the club decided to look into ways to offset their travel emissions as no professional sports team in the United States had ever been able to.
The Eagles reached out to the state's parks and recreation associations for potential solutions and were pointed to Neshaminy State Park. Located on the Delaware River, the park was a former industrial space that was about to go under redevelopment and plot of land needed trees and other foliage.
That plot of land would become Eagles Forest.
"The way that it was calculated was, 'Well, how much carbon will a tree offset in its lifetime?" said Norman Vossschulte, the Eagles' vice president of fan experience and sustainability.
"There are certain calculations you can do, so we worked with some scientists and they basically told us every year how many trees we should plant in order to offset the team's travel."
The team was still planting trees in Eagles Forest when Vossschulte joined the organization in 2012, making sure the number of trees offset the team's carbon emissions from traveling every year. Once one section of the park was complete, the Eagles shifted to a project in Puerto Rico for another initiative to offset team travel.
This time, the program was 1,500 miles away in Puerto Rico. The Eagles had switched to planting mangrove trees and seagrass at Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve to offset their travel.
With that particular mangrove project completed a year ago, the team now works alongside the National Marine Life Sanctuary Foundation to tag migrating birds off the East Coast.
"When you tag birds and follow their migratory routes, you actually learn a lot about the health of the planet. Basically, what time of the year they migrate, how far they migrate, how healthy is the migration," Vossschulte said. "We are now investing into that project to offset our team travel.
"It has gone from trees to the most carbon-sequestering plant in the ocean in the mangrove, which is also another tree, and to now investing into birds who nest in trees, 'How cool is that?'"
It all goes back to trees. It was just a matter of time before Eagles Forest was revisited, the trees that started it all.
Earlier this year, the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources reached out to Vossschulte to let him know that the state was planning on planting 250 trees around Eagles Forest for the 250th anniversary of the country. Vossschulte knew he had to attend.
"When I went there, it was so cool to see all these trees, so tall and so beautiful, and how many people were enjoying the park," Vossschulte said. "And then to see it come full circle by planting 250 additional trees for the 250th anniversary of the United States, I just thought that it was such a special moment."
In place of what was once an empty park, Vossschulte saw fully mature trees cover the former industrial space with a "canopy of shade." To him, the growth of the trees and the result of the park showed the commitment of the Eagles organization and Go Green for a sustainable future that extends beyond the team.
As the trees grew, so did other Go Green initiatives. Lincoln Financial Field has the largest solar power plant of any stadium in the world, producing 40% of the stadium's energy on-site. Vossschulte and the team have also worked with GreenGear Supply Company to switch the plastic bags in the team store to an Ethanol-based polyethylene that biodegrades in a landfill within three years.
"It's not just a one-off marketing project," Vossschulte said. "I really love when we do something that just makes us even more sustainable in the long run.
"I love that we had the foresight to do a project all these years ago that now has come full circle and turned into a beautiful forest where you really see the long-time impact that our sustainability efforts have had. I think it is pretty awesome." - Written by Caroline Connor
