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As the activity in our facilities returns to pre-pandemic levels, we have made efforts on multiple fronts to ensure our sustainability program maintains its best practices while seeking new opportunities to become even better stewards in our community.
Our environmental impact is already lessened by the fact that Xcel Energy’s power mix contains more renewables than most areas of the U.S. But we wanted to do more. So, as of January 2023, we are now offsetting 100% of the non-renewable portion of our electricity with a subscription to Windsource power.
The success of our comprehensive recycling program has long been a source of pride among staff. However, the recycling rate had been holding nearly steady for some time, while our other sustainability efforts have progressed forward. Now, we’ve begun doing regular post-event waste sorting audits to pinpoint opportunities to improve the program and move the needle further toward Zero Waste.
We believe that connecting with other similar facilities is key to creating and sharing the best practices that move us all forward. We have continued developing our partnership with the United Nations Sports for Climate Action initiative, which pushes international sports to operate more sustainably. And this year, we have joined the GOAL (Green Operations & Advanced Leadership) initiative, to engage in furthering sustainable sports among venues here in the U.S.
We believe education is the key to a successful sustainability program. Education not only for new employees, but also ongoing engagement with existing employees. We approach this through new employee onboarding presentations, employee sustainability tours, Green Teams and continued volunteerism opportunities.