NEW YORK – The NBA will host NBA Green Week presented by Sprint March 22-29.  During the week, the league, its teams and players will participate in greening programs and events to encourage fans to focus on “three pointers” – reduce, reuse, recycle – to be more environmentally responsible across their local communities.

Throughout the week, NBA and NBA Cares social channels will post Sprint “three pointers” with #NBAGreen that will use game highlights and simple-to-implement tips to help fans reduce, reuse and recycle.  Beginning March 23, fans can enter to win prizes using #NBAGreenSweeps.

The NBA will work with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree each time #NBAGreen is posted (up to 25,000 trees) throughout the week.  Additionally, the NBA will plant three trees for every three-pointer hit during an NBA game March 22-29.

In collaboration with Bonneville Environmental Foundation, the NBA and Sprint will purchase renewable energy certificates to ensure all 64 NBA games played during Green Week are powered by renewable energy.

As the industry leader in phone take-back and recycling, Sprint has diverted more than 65 million phones from landfills since 2001.  Throughout Green Week, Sprint will work with NBA legends to host phone recycling events in Boston and Los Angeles where fans can participate in the Sprint Buyback Program.  Today, Sprint matches all major U.S. carrier phone trade-in pricing (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile).

The Sprint Buyback Program offers an account credit to new or existing customers who recycle their unwanted wireless devices.  Last year alone, Sprint bought back more than three million phones and put more than $250 million back into customers’ pockets.  Fans who participate at the Sprint Store on Boylston Street in Boston on March 23 will have the chance to receive tickets to an upcoming NBA game and meet NBA Legend Rick Fox.  The NBA will also host a phone recycling event at the Sprint Store on South La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles over the course of the week.

NBA Green Week presented by Sprint, in partnership with the Green Sports Alliance, supports the NBA family in a variety of programming and events, such as facility greening programs, e-recycling drives and tree plantings, to reduce our collective environmental footprint.  The program aims to educate fans on sustainability while generating awareness to help protect the environment.  The NBA is the only professional sports league to dedicate an entire week to educating fans about responsible environmental stewardship.  For more information, visit NBA.com/green or NBA.com/livegreen.

About NBA Cares
NBA Cares is the league’s global social responsibility program that builds on the NBA’s mission of addressing important social issues in the United States and around the world.  Through this program, the NBA, its teams and players have donated more than $242 million to charity, completed more than 3 million hours of hands-on community service, and created more than 915 places where kids and families can live, learn, or play, in 26 countries and territories on five continents.  NBA Cares works with internationally recognized youth-serving programs that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes, including: KaBOOM!, Special Olympics, YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, UNICEF, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Share Our Strength and GLAAD.

About Sprint
Sprint (NYSE: S) is a communications services company that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to the things they care about most. Sprint served nearly 56 million connections as of Dec. 31, 2014 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past four years. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.

About the Green Sports Alliance
The Green Sports Alliance is a nonprofit that leverages the cultural and market influence of sports to promote healthy, sustainable communities where we live and play. The Alliance does so by inspiring sports leagues, teams, venues, their partners and millions of fans to embrace renewable energy, healthy food, recycling, water efficiency, species preservation, safer chemicals and other environmentally preferable practices. Since launching nationally in March 2011 with 6 professional teams, including the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and WNBA’s Seattle Storm, and 5 venues as founding members, the Green Sports Alliance has grown to nearly 300 teams and venues from 20 different sports leagues and 14 countries. Currently, the NBA and 18 of its teams and arenas have joined the Alliance. Find out more at www.greensportsalliance.org and follow the conversation on Twitter at @SportsAlliance and #GreenSports.

About the Arbor Day Foundation
The Arbor Day Foundation, founded in 1972 on the centennial of the first Arbor Day, is a million member nonprofit conservation and education organization with the mission to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees. More information about the Foundation and its programs is available at arborday.org.

About Bonneville Environmental Foundation
A national nonprofit, BEF empowers businesses to be in balance with the environment through a full suite of environmental products, educational and community engagement programs and custom solutions that help our partners address their unavoidable energy, carbon and water impact. We align our partners’ goals with our extensive industry expertise to achieve immediate results today while helping solve tomorrow’s biggest environmental challenges. We thrive on bringing game-changing ideas to market, including: helping to start the voluntary renewable energy credit (REC) market; creating the first voluntary water restoration product (WRC); helping launch the first community-funded solar project in the nation; co-creating the Change the Course water sustainability campaign; and building the nation’s most comprehensive K-12 renewable energy STEM education program. Learn more at B-E-F.org.