Have Penn State tailgaters cleaned up their act? Recycling education efforts continue
Fall is here, and Penn State football is back again. Along with the games come celebratory tailgates filled with food, family and football galore. But behind the scenes of those seasonal parties are often piles of filth left over from all the fun, trash that weighs our planet down and adds more pollution to our pot of Earthly concerns.
Amy Schirf, education coordinator for Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority, made a cleanup call eight years ago that went viral on social media, posting embarrassing pictures of trash splayed everywhere after a tailgate. She has continued the cleanup and recycling reminders every football season, asking tailgaters to work together to clean up their waste.
Keeping our Earth clean is now a central topic of conversation, even among fellow Big Ten universities like the University of Michigan, whose stadium is attempting to usher in a future where zero-waste facilities are a possibility. Penn State has its fair share of historic efforts toward cleaning up around Beaver Stadium, but have we ever found a sustainable stride?
While 2017 was the year of the trashy tailgate reminder, attempts to keep Beaver Stadium clean stretch back to the 1990s, with 36 tons of recyclable material collected after 1999’s six home games. Since then, Beaver Stadium has steadily made improvements to keep trash and recycling under control. A-frames with free bags were introduced in 2008, while small groups of student volunteers wearing neon yellow T-shirts transformed into the Student Tailgate Ambassadors who pass out blue recycling bags and recycling tips.
“From merely my observation, the tailgate lots have looked much cleaner since the 2017 post. I think fans realized that it was a problem and have cleaned up their act, literally,” Schirf said. “There are still some problem spots, but nothing like it was pre-viral post.”
A relatively new role in the Penn State Office of Physical Plant has also played a part in the improvements. Ayodeji “Ayo“ Oluwalana, waste reduction and recycling program manager for the university, spent the past three years adding innovative ways to recycle waste at Beaver Stadium. Furthering collaborations with the CCRRA, student volunteers, and even stadium vendors selling aluminum beer cups, Oluwalana and OPP’s new methods help Beaver Stadium inch closer to their desired goal of a 75% recycling rate.
A new initiative to collect the popular blue and white shakers at the end of each Penn State game, headed by Tailgate Ambassadors, has even led to a neat opportunity between the CCRRA and a company in Virginia willing to reuse those recyclables for plastic lumber, which gets used to build benches.
While Penn State tailgates might be cleaner than before, there’s still a long way to go. Beaver Stadium crowds have grown exponentially, from collecting 36 tons of recyclable materials in the six games of 1999’s football season to collecting around the same amount (about 35 tons) in just the first four of eight home games in 2024.
At the CCRRA, Schirf and her team still face roadblocks to 100% recyclability in their collection of blue recycling bags from the stadium.
“No matter what method and amount of education that we provide, we can’t seem to get clean, recyclable material from the blue bags,” she said. “Year after year, the percent of contamination in the blue bags stays the same. We have tried some pilot programs, but until we find other options than the blue bags for tailgate recycling, I am afraid not much progress will be made.”
How to recycle at your Penn State tailgate
To lessen contamination and improve our recyclability rate, only three materials should be in blue bags: plastic bottles, glass bottles and metal cans.
White bags are dedicated to all other forms of trash, whether plates of potato salad or red Solo cups. You can even pop empty glass and plastic bottles beside any climbing tower of cans to easily create an uncontaminated “blue bag” corner at your tailgate.
After tying up your bags and leaving them neatly in your tailgate spot, you’re all done! Dedicated workers and volunteers swing by to take care of the rest.
Even if you forget what goes where, those all-too-familiar A-frames are everywhere to remind you.
For more information, visit CCRRA’s website.