UW football recycling program exceeds expectations
December 19, 2008 | Football
The Athletic Department's initial recycling program, "Wear Red Think Green", for football games at Camp Randall Stadium completed a successful season.
ReThnk Wisconsin, a campus student organization dedicated to improving waste management across the UW campus, partnered with the Athletic Department to launch this initiative comprised nearly entirely of UW Student Volunteers. ReThink volunteers collected and recycled roughly 2,820 pounds of bottles, or the equivalent of approximately 64,457 individual bottles. This total was more than double the expectations for the initial year of the program.
ReThink Wisconsin utilized approximately 500 volunteers and staff during the 2008 season to make the collection efforts possible. The volunteers worked closely with the Athletic Departments Facilities Operations staff to ensure that the collected bottles were disposed of properly.
Barry Fox, the Athletic Department's Director of Facilities Operations, said the success of this program falls largely on the Athletic Department Staff and Rethink volunteers who developed and successfully implemented it. He added that without the fans also embracing the recycling efforts the program's success would not have been possible.
ReThink and the Athletic Department's Facilities staff worked with UW Waste and Recycling which picked up and hauled the designated recycling only dumpster to Waste Management's Madison area facility, where the bottles were ultimately weighed and then recycled.
Fans utilized 110 recycling points inside the stadium to deposit their plastic bottles. The National W-Club sold 110,764 bottles during the 2008 football season, meaning the program collected roughly 58% of the total number of plastic bottles inside Camp Randall during the 2008 Football Season.
Ben Miller, Associate Dean of the UW College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, said it takes 450 years for one plastic bottle to degrade naturally. Miller said that recycling just one plastic bottle can save the same amount of energy needed to power a 60 watt light bulb for six hours. The efforts of the program's volunteers resulted in saving the equivalent of 387,742 hours of energy necessary to power a 60 watt bulb.
Plans are already underway for further improving the recycling collection efforts at Camp Randall for the 2009 home season as well as incorporation of the recycling efforts in other UW Athletic Facilities.
The Athletic Department wishes to thank the ReThink and its volunteers for their efforts this season, in addition to the thousands of fans who took the time during the 2008 football season to place their bottles in the blue recycling barrels.
