Gleason used a paper calculator created by the Environmental Defense Fund to estimate the environmental impact of the 135 pounds of paper used to recruit Nelson. Next he estimated the impact of the paper being sent to all Division I hoops recruits in a given year.
His computation began with the average weight of paper each college sent to Nelson, which was 2.4 pounds. Most schools send mail to at least 100 players in each class (according to three recruiters who spoke to SI) and are targeting two classes (juniors and seniors) simultaneously. If each of the 347 Division I basketball programs sends 2.4 pounds of mail annually to 200 kids, the environmental impact each year of the production of that paper, according to Gleason's analysis, would be:
? the consumption of 220 tons of wood, the equivalent of about 1,526 trees;
? greenhouse gas emissions equal to what 39 cars produce in a year, and the use of enough energy to power 32 homes for a year;
? and 167,034 pounds of solid waste, which would fill six garbage trucks, and 1,423,939 gallons of wastewater, the equivalent of two swimming pools' full.
Noting the environmental cost compared to the number of letters Nelson opened, Gleason asked the obvious question: "If recruits don't open the letters, why keep sending them? Why waste all that money and paper?"
Some schools might soon ask themselves the same thing. In May, Michigan and Ohio State jointly announced that they would cease printing media guides. Bygones from the pre-Internet age, these publications contain as many as 208 pages (the NCAA-mandated maximum) of records, stats, player biographies and other team information that is now also readily available electronically. Long a recruiting tool, they are no longer of much value on that front either. (Nelson received 44 guides and says he looked at "one or two.")
