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Like so many things, our sustainability program has been challenged by COVID-19. In the past year, we have purchased very little - and the few purchases made were mostly disinfectants, sanitizers, and other safety-related items. Likewise, our waste stream today contains more hard-to-recycle items, like masks and gloves. Fortunately, with the help of the waste innovators at TerraCycle, we can now collect these items for recycling too. However, COVID-19 did have one upside: fewer events meant drastically less environmental impact from our operations. Meanwhile, our renewable energy portfolio kept working, even when our buildings were idle.
We are proud to announce that we also started down a new path this year, toward offsetting impacts beyond our building operations. On July 1, 2021, we partnered with UPM Blandin, a sustainable forestry company in northern Minnesota, to offset the carbon emissions of Minnesota Wild team travel for the entire 2021-22 season. This partnership offsets about 143 hours of flight time for the entire team - and equates to the energy use of roughly 180 homes.