Indianapolis works to become greenest Super Bowl ever

Perhaps the most visual example of Indianapolis' goal to be the greenest Super Bowl is this wheel in the heart of the Super Bowl Village. The wheel actually generates electricity as visitors took their turns making it spin Tuesday.

With so much other planning already required to launch an event like the Super Bowl, many wonder why there's such a big focus on the environment.

"It's important to the Super Bowl Host Committee that we leave a positive lasting impact and that includes environmental programs," said Summer Keown.

Throughout Super Bowl village, there is a recycling container for every trash can.


"The media party tonight and other parties, they will have event recycling where bins are being taken to those locations so we can make sure we're capturing as much material as possible," said Carey Hamilton.

At the JW Marriott, they're going further than recycling paper and plastic, they're spearheading a ground breaking program right in the back of their busy kitchen. They will be composting food waste during arguably the busiest week they've ever seen.

"Our goal is to have this long-term impact so when you look at the JW and the composting project, that is the first of its kind, we hope this will inspire other restaurants, hotels in Indy to start food composting programs," said Hamilton.

Other green-focused programs engaged individuals across the state of Indiana, including students.  Slaney Neisen was recruited as a sophomore and has spent the last two years planting trees and teaching others about being green.

"One of our goals as Green Corp. members was 2012 trees by 2012, which we met the goal and we planted about 12 trees at the Marion County Fairgrounds and at my own house, we planted about 20 trees on our own," said Neisen.

All of that has taken a lot of work behind the scenes but Keown, who has been hard at work on the project for the last few years, said it's all been worth it. 

"We've had an enormous outpouring of support and to date have saved more than  1 million pounds of carbon and reduced water usage by more than 2 million gallons," said Keown.