Trash talking will take on a whole new meaning next weekend when LSU tries to defend not only a dominant overall record against South Carolina on the gridiron, but also back-to-back titles in the Southeastern Conference’s division of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Game Day Challenge.
The contest, which dates back to 2009, pits universities nationwide against one another to see which school can recycle the most during one home football game in October.
In both 2010 and 2011, LSU recycled more cans, bottles and paper per game attendee than any other SEC school. Fans, with the help of about 30 volunteers, recycled about a third of a pound per attendee of would-be trash into bins during last year’s contest held at the Auburn game.
Another way to look at the numbers is in diversion percentages, in other words, a percentage of trash that ended up in recycling factories as opposed to landfills.
Environmentally-conscious fans diverted about 22 percent of all the garbage to recycling at the Auburn game, which is like eliminating one-fifth of all the stadium’s landfill trash and instead sending it to be recycled, according to figures provided by LSU Campus Sustainability.
In fact, the average diversion percentage for all LSU home games since 2003 has risen from about 1 percent to almost 18 percent last season, according to the same figures.
“If we can get all the fans that come into the stadium to recycle, that number’s just going to keep climbing,” said Denise Newell, campus sustainability manager for Facility Services. “A lot of people just aren’t aware.”
Which is why a group of undergraduate marketing students produced 30-second commercials on sustainability for Associate Professor Judith Anne Garretson Folse’s marketing class last spring.
And when the Athletic Department got hold of one group’s commercial promoting the EPA Game Day Challenge, it decided the commercial was good enough to play on Tiger Stadium’s video board during last week’s Towson game.
“We thought it’d just be funny to shoot everyday, average people doing football things and not doing them well,” said marketing senior Cassidy Causey, who helped produce the Tiger-pride-themed video with two other students.
Her theory is that most people can’t help the Tigers win on the football field, so why not help LSU win in different ways, like recycling?
