Material from NFL Draft finds new homes in Detroit's sustainable effort
(CBS DETROIT) – As the massive setup around the NFL Draft in Detroit is coming down piece by piece, most of it will go back to the inventory of the rental companies, but hundreds of tons of material custom-made for the event will soon have a second home.
"So we want to recover as much as we can, try to make sure that the money and the use associated with those products stays local to the largest extent possible. And it truly is, you know, just by the very nature of the way events work, something that is going to stay completely within the Detroit metro area," Ryan Sclar, sustainability manager at ENGIE Impact
So, the NFL sought out local non-profits that could find a way to repurpose the raw material.
Over the next three days, Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County will make several trips to the footprint in search of the lumber, astroturf and mesh.
"We're always trying to fill our ReStores with lots of creative, unique items for people to get. This definitely qualifies as unique," said Steve Tennies, ReStore donation manager at Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County. "If it has cool logos on, they can maybe come to our ReStores–most of it is going to be in our Farmington Hills ReStore on Grand River near Eight Mile."
Other groups are hunting for items that will one day be considered artifacts for the historic event that drew record-breaking crowds.
"There have been events like this in the past, and they all kind of represent a node in history that takes us to the next place that we're going to become. Some of the things that the Detroit Historical Society does that people don't think about are contemporary collecting," said Rebecca Salminen Witt, chief development and communications officer for the Detroit Historical Society.
According to Sclar, at least 25 box trucks of donated materials will end up back in the community.
"We're looking for signage; we're looking for things that have the 'City of Detroit' on them, the 'NFL Draft,'" Salminen Witt said. "We picked up something that's got all the streets and directional signage on it–credentials from the time, any of that kind of stuff that you know is going to jog your memory and create some nostalgia for the weekend that we just had."