Recycling: Everything you need to know to recycle right this Penn State football season
We have been preaching the same message for the past few years: When attending a Penn State football game, blue bags are for empty bottles and cans and clear bags are for everything else. It is that simple. We’d love to see the recycling contamination reduced this season.
If you continue to read this column, I bet you will earn an “A” in game day recycling!
It is easy to recycle at Penn State football tailgates. Once you settle in at your tailgate spot, walk over to an A-Frame labeled for Penn State Football Recycling. The A-Frames contain two colors of bags (blue bags for recycling empty plastic bottles, glass bottles and aluminum cans – and clear bags for everything else).
Once you fill your blue bags with empty bottles and cans, tie up the bag and leave it at your tailgate. Do the same with your clear trash bag: tie it up and leave it at your tailgate. The grounds crew will begin collecting blue and clear bags the morning after the game. Clear bags will go to the landfill and the blue bags will be delivered to the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority (CCRRA) where the contents will be sorted and recycled.
To sort the recyclables, employees of CCRRA will open each bag by hand and empty the contents on our sorting conveyor belt. They will then sort the materials from the bags by hand into the following categories: plastic bottles, clear glass bottles, green glass bottles, brown glass bottles and metal cans. The recyclables will be prepared and sent to market and made into new products.
This would be a relatively easy process if the blue bags only contain empty plastic bottles, glass bottles and metal cans. With readers like you helping to spread the word, I hope blue bag recycling materials will come into our facility much cleaner this season. Please help to educate your friends and family on proper recycling at football tailgates this fall.
Also, don’t forget to leave your tailgate area better than you found it. Our employees, the PSU grounds crew and your community will thank you for it.
To end, I can share that we received 15 tons of blue bag material after the Penn State-West Virginia game. After sorting, we weighed the material and found that 60% of what was in the blue bags was material that could be recycled and 40% was contamination that needed to be landfilled. We are hoping to beat that 60% mark as the season continues.
You can help by spreading the word to your friends and tailgaters on how to recycle right at our PSU games. We thank you for helping us to educate our local football fans! I have a feeling that those who read my column are some of the best recyclers around!