Fans fill the Grove before the game against Southeast Missouri in September.
Photo by Thomas Graning | The Daily Mississippian
Tailgaters in the Grove produced more than 60 tons of waste during the first home football game at Ole Miss in September, with only a ton of recyclables collected by the Green Grove Initiative.
The game against Southeast Missouri attracted many visitors to the campus to experience its tailgating tradition. Left behind after the celebration, however, was 67 tons of waste that varied from leftovers to utensils, with only about 1.5 percent material sorted into recyclables through the green bags given by volunteers of the initiative.
This amount of waste amounts to around nine small school buses combined.
“It’s just that with the atmosphere, it’s a fun place to be, a celebration,” said Anne McCauley, Office of Campus Sustainability assistant director. “It’s a hard time to cut through that and say, ‘Hey, can you do something a little differently?’ But we are not giving up.”
Approximately 489 tons of waste were collected over the entire football season last year. The diversion rate — how much trash is diverted from landfills — was at 1 percent, which McCauley described as really low.
The recycling program at Ole Miss is managed by the Green Grove Initiative, under McCauley’s office. The campaign started in 2009, where only two tons of recyclables were collected from more than 350 tons of trash during the entire football season.
KayKay DeRossette, gameday intern and recently elected Miss Ole Miss, said that participating in the campaign is the easiest way to practice good stewardship of resources, as stated in the University Creed.
“We don’t want to change the culture of tailgating because that’s like a strong tradition to Ole Miss,” she said. “But we want to make sure that we’re all using our resources and doing it responsibly.”
The initiative relies greatly on its volunteers for its success. During the SEMO game, 73 students volunteered for one and a half to two hours of handing out green recycling bags to different tents and promoting and educating them about recycling.
Recyclables include aluminum cans, plastic bottles and solo cups. Plastic bottles only include classification symbols one and two, such as drinking bottles and milk jugs. These numbers can usually be found at the bottom and inside the recycling logo of three arrows in a cycle.
Tailgaters can leave these bags in their tents for the volunteers to collect. These are taken to the Oxford Recycling Center for sorting. In the past game, sorting was done twice, rather than just once, because of the amount of recyclables.
Gameday intern Jillian Cowart said the sorting poses a problem when people are not aware of what exactly to put in.
“You would be amazed in what you find in recycling bags. Our main problem in sorting is the food and liquid in the bags,” she said. “Last time, we found a pair of shoes.”
McCauley said that the volunteer turnout has been good for the first game. However, challenges will surely take place in the coming Texas A&M game on Oct. 12.
“The people who come to the Ole Miss games, they have learned already from the first game and they will be more familiar with how we do things,” she said. “But then we’ll probably have a lot more A&M fans than we have Southeast Missouri fans, so they don’t know the system.”
Home football games certainly attract many people from different places, not only to Ole Miss, but also to Oxford, resulting in a waste increase in the entire city.
“It has to do not only with the football game in the stadium, but in the Grove,” said Amberlyn Liles, assistant director for sanitation and recycling in Oxford. “Our businesses boom at that time, so there’s more waste.”
An average of 160 tons of waste is collected in Oxford-Lafayette County on an ordinary day, which is almost 60,000 tons of waste every year if there are no home games.
However, as far as the state of Mississippi goes, Oxford is ahead of the game when it comes to recycling, Liles said.
“We’re recycling household recyclables and we’re keeping leaves and a lot of vegetation out of rubbish landfill by using erosion control,” she said.
From October 2012 to June 2013, the Oxford-Lafayette Recycling Center recycled around 800 tons, including the material collected during gamedays, newspapers, mixed papers and cardboard. Ole Miss, in particular, contributed more than 100 tons of recyclables in this span of time.
“You break the loop when you throw it away,” Liles said on how trash is made into other products once recycled. “Every soda can that is recycled saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.”
For Ole Miss, the Office of Campus Sustainability is working on more programs to push the sustainability of the Grove, including plans for “green certified” tents. Though still in progress, this aims to recognize tailgaters who are willing to take a step forward after recycling by actually reducing the amount of waste their tent produces, through reusable cups and utensils or usage of cloth instead of paper napkins.
“Everybody loves the Grove … and we want to impress among students that the idea of a premier tailgating location encompasses a less wasteful tailgating experience,” McCauley said. “It’s not just a great party, but it’s also respectful of resources too.”
