Arizona company set to make a big environmental impact on Super Bowl Sunday

PHOENIX - This weekend, the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs will battle it out on the gridiron for the Super Bowl title.

Amidst the battle, however, an Arizona company based in Gilbert will also leave an environmentally positive impact on the big game itself.

Footprint produces bowls, cups, plates and other food containers with the goal of eliminating single-use plastic. Susan Koehler, chief of sales and marketing at Footprint, says the best thing about them — they are recyclable, compostable and biodegradable.

“The way to think about it is, plastic [adds] chemicals into your food and there is a lot of research that shows chemicals in our body are not helping us,” Koehler explained. And Super Bowl officials loved what they were doing so much they decided to partner with Footprint.

So the company sent over 100,000 products to Miami, where the big game will be held. "We were honored to be selected by the Super Bowl host committee. Honored to be there the whole week interacting with teams and fans and consumers.”

The way they make the products is, they use pre-consumer scraps of cardboard and other virgin materials, then create a custom blend that makes the products. All of this behaving like plastic.

Koehler hopes consumers catch on that this is the way to go. "There will be more weight of plastic in the ocean than fish," she explains. "That should concern everyone. We want to leave the planet in a better place than it is today."

Their products are already being used at Chick-fil-A, and Sweet Greens, Sprouts and more. They will be in several other major retailers soon. 

But if you can’t wait, you can buy their products directly from their website soon.