The University of Tennessee spent almost $900,000 in 2007 to send its trash to a landfill. Campus-wide recycling was nine percent of total waste. Ten years later, UT spends less than $400,000 a year transporting trash, and recycling has reached approximately 30 percent of total waste, UT Recycling Manger Jay Price said. “We were literally throwing almost $1 million away,” Price said. “So we felt like there was a lot of room for improvement there. So we started improving things one piece at a time.”

Eighteen tons of garbage was hauled out of Neyland Stadium and recycled during the 2007 football season. The same amount of waste was recycled during a single game in the 2016 season, with some games reaching as much as 25 tons of waste diverted from landfills.

Recycling numbers have increased consistently since Price started a decade ago. The UT Recycling team of three full-time employees and 15 student workers set a goal in 2014 to make Neyland a “zero-waste stadium” by 2020.

Zero waste is accomplished by diverting 90 percent of the stadium’s waste from a landfill, Price said. Diverting waste can be done through recycling and composting efforts, as well as donating leftover food from luxury viewing areas and concession stands.

Recycling begins outside the stadium. Staff members and volunteers set up recycling bins in the heavily trafficked tailgating areas and hand out recycling bag in other areas. Price said the staff strategically plans where material is most likely to be tossed in a recycling bin.

“We go in front of the gates, because everyone has to drop what they’re carrying (when they enter the stadium),” he said. “We’ve discovered that basically everything they’re carrying is recyclable, because it’s almost always beverage containers.”

Inside the stadium, trash cans have been matched, and in some cases replaced, with recycling and compost bins. After the game, workers package leftover food and freeze it for Second Harvest Food Bank to pick up. A volunteer cleaning crew comes in the next day to pick up leftover waste and place it in the appropriate recycling or compost bin.

Alaina Wood, UT Recycling residence life outreach coordinator and UT senior, said she works 8-14 hours on game day to help make sure recycling numbers are as high as possible. “It’s just incredible how much time and effort goes into getting ready for football,” Wood said. “It may seem like really tough work, but it’s rewarding because I know we’re going to divert waste from the landfill.”

To read the full story, visit http://www.knoxnews.com/story/money/business/journal/2017/05/02/ut-diverts-25-tons-waste-landfill-one-football-game/100603208/.

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