A football stadium may have green grass but does it have green habits? Each week, Great Lakes Echo highlights a Big Ten football stadium’s attempts to do the most to impact the environment the least.
All schools have information on the stadium’s diversion rate – the amount of waste recycled instead of put in a landfill.
Photo: Justin Anderson.
Stadium: Beaver Stadium
School: Penn State University
Built: 1960
Capacity: 106,572
2009 diversion rate: 48.6 percent
Scouting report: Penn State has been recycling at Beaver Stadium for almost 16 years, but a recent initiative to promote recycling helped the university more than triple its recycling average.
Since 2008, Penn State has diverted more than 100 tons of trash from landfills from Beaver Stadium, university officials said.
“With the landfill something like 100 plus miles away, it’s important for several reasons to recycle,” said Paul Ruskin, communications director at Penn State’s office of Physical Plant. “We’ve saved a lot of petroleum by not sending material to the landfill.”
At home games, students known as STATER’s — Students Taking Action to Encourage Recycling — hand out plastic bags for recycling.