Dog-Gone Mess

SEC home games like Saturday's often create the perfect storm of garbage dumping - on the prettiest parts of campus.

Damning pictures of tailgate garbage strewn across North Campus went viral during football season last year. So, as part of an ongoing effort to get fans to do the right thing,  officials plan to place more temporary recycling bins around campus on football Saturdays this season.

In addition to 1,000 extra garbage bins placed strategically around tailgate areas, 1,000 recycling bins will also be left alongside the trash cans set near gathering fans, said Bill Fox, campus fleet maintenance supervisor and director of trash cleanup. 

Happy fans, it turns out, make more trash, and campus sustainability officials are hoping the partygoers will do their bit by separating trash themselves at the campus bins this year. Having cleanup crews do it is not possible, Fox said.

"Ninety thousand people recycling gets more done than 200 people digging through garbage," Fox said.

The waste that gets left behind on the ground for pickup is "highly contaminated" with food and "you do not want that in the recycling stream," he said. 

Time is also a factor, since campus must be clean for the start of Monday classes. Each year, mounds of trash left behind by fans must be collected by paid workers who arrive on campus at 7 a.m., the Sunday after home games.

"You've got to pick up 30 tons of trash in eight hours," he said.

For the second year, the athletic association, which foots the bill for all cleanup efforts, also plans to pay a variety of nonprofit groups $500 a game to pick up plastics at the stadium.

 “Recycling is directly proportional to garbage and garbage is directly proportional to how well the team does,” Fox said.

“It’s one of the down sides to being a top-ranked party school,” he said.

To help cut back on the cleanup work, student volunteers from the Fellowship for Christian Athletes and workers affiliated with the UGA Athletic Association will be handing out recycling bags at tailgate areas and parking lots and “educating people” about what to put inside the bags.

The county will continue to place 50-70 recycling and trash bins on the streets leading into campus, hoping to cut down on total amount of trash headed to the county landfill. Right now, separation for recycling only happens at the front end of trash collection.

When it reaches solid waste, “it’s all mixed together,” said . “We can’t separate. We don’t have that kind of facility. Once it’s contaminated, it’s contaminated.”

Fox started the recycling kick five years ago by having cardboard left behind at the stadium collected. Gameday tonnage has dropped from 36 to 34 tons a game since then, he estimates, although that number can more than double after an SEC night game. Officials, nevertheless, are hoping for a further drop in total tons this year. The end result? Reduced tipping fees and saved space at the landfill.

Fox maintains that only a minority of fans litter – they just do it in shady, conspicuous areas that are the most popular and noticeable, according to Fox.

Just who are these litterbugs who leaves piles of garbage around beautiful, historic North Campus?

“It’s all walks of life, from your youngest student to the oldest alumni,” Fox said.