Today, Total Hockey announced the launch of HockeyGreen, a recycling program for composite hockey sticks. This new initiative focuses on aligning Total Hockey’s business practices with environmentally friendly strategies in an effort to reduce its ecological impact.

“We are excited to launch the first genuine hockey equipment recycling effort in North America,” said Michael Benoit, President and CEO of Total Hockey.

HockeyGreen provides players with an incentive to recycle their broken and unusable composite hockey sticks instead of just throwing them away. HockeyGreen rewards customers for going green. Every broken composite hockey stick is eligible for a $10 credit towards a qualifying stick purchase at Total Hockey. Beginning June 1, customers are asked to bring broken sticks to their local Total Hockey retail store. In early August, customers will be able to recycle their old sticks online at www.hockeygreen.com and apply the $10 credit towards online stick purchases.

The goal of the program is to collect broken composite hockey sticks from hockey players around the nation to build a large inventory that can be used in the research and development of discovering a way to capture and extract the carbon fiber and develop a method to reuse these materials in the creation of new products.

“We have wrestled with this concept for the last eighteen months because of the evident challenges of reclaiming carbon fiber from stick materials. We finally decided not to wait any longer,” Benoit said. “Instead, we are offering the recycling industry a chance to capture the T Prize, an award aimed at incenting engineers and material processors to uncover the secrets of carbon fiber recapture from composite hockey sticks.”

In an effort to find a way to recycle carbon fiber, Total Hockey is taking on the task of collecting and housing large amounts of carbon fiber materials to provide to organizations focused on the research and development process of recycling these materials. The third party organizations will focus on either the reuse of carbon fiber materials or the use of carbon fiber materials in experimental research.

The T Prize is a $100,000 award being offered by Total Hockey for the individual or company that can develop an economically viable process for the extraction and reuse of carbon fibers from composite hockey sticks.

“Total Hockey is in the process of recruiting and assembling a small team of experts to help us define the specific requirements for T Prize qualification and we expect to release the specifics before the end of the year,” Benoit stated.

HockeyGreen.com (www.hockeygreen.com) will feature updates on the T Prize, including the announcements on the expert panel selection, specific parameters for qualification for eligibility for the T Prize and delivering the award planned for late 2012.

“I am ecstatic about the opportunity to do something about the environment within our sport. It is wonderful to recycle bottles, cans and paper, but to be a pioneer in a major initiative involving the recycling of hockey gear itself is fantastic,” said Benoit.

Total Hockey is committed to demonstrating progress in environmental understanding and practices to help reduce its ecological impact in the world. The hockey retailer is actively pursuing avenues to engage the hockey community in its green efforts to not only raise awareness, but also provide solutions to minimize the organization’s carbon footprint. These endeavors focus on implementing strategies to further reuse, recycle and reduce products and services at Total Hockey.

Total Hockey is a privately held hockey equipment retailer based in St. Louis, Mo., that is dedicated to providing the latest in hockey equipment, superior quality merchandise and excellent customer service. Founded in 1998, Total Hockey has embarked on a broad-scale expansion in specialty hockey operations and now has ten retail stores in the greater St. Louis and Chicago areas, as well as an e-commerce facility at totalhockey.com www.totalhockey.com/. For more information, call toll-free at 866.929.6699.

Total Hockey
3120 Riverport Tech Center Drive
Maryland Heights, MO 63043

Andrea Roewe
Marketing Manager
aroewe@totalhockey.com

This release was published on openPR.