Hi Claire and Breanna,

I have set up for a variety of different size athletic events so may be able to help. If you haven't already read it, I wrote a blog post about this a while back that might help.

http://blog.max-r.net/2011/09/15/do-you-see-what-i-see-part-1/

A few other things that I can't stress enough:

You need parallel access (having trash and recycling located together but visibly different than each other). If you have either a stand-alone trash bin or a stand-alone recycling bin, both trash and recyclables are going to get dumped into that bin and your recyclables are going to end up in the trash (either because they ended up in the trash bin or because the recycling bin got so contaminated, it got dumped as trash).

You need restrictive lids (round holes for bottles & cans, slots for paper, or some combination thereof for single stream). I have found that nothing is more effective at identifying and preventing contamination in recycling bins.

This is probably a place where you are going to end up over-containered. Don't think in terms of "I need this number of sets of bins because each bin holds "X" amount of stuff and I have "Y" amount of total stuff. Think more in terms of "I need this number of sets of bins because I have "X" number of exits out of the arena/stadium and folks need a place to drop their stuff on the way out." In that over-containered system, you are going to end up with a lot of less-than-full bins but it beats the alternative of having to clean up all that stuff as litter.

Hope this helps.

Hi Claire,
I would recommend this excellent case study from Ohio State, "Zero Waste at Ohio Stadium: Lessons Learned and a Beginner’s Guide" that is in our campus sustainability case study database.
Here is the overview:
In autumn 2011, The Ohio State University launched the Zero Waste at Ohio Stadium program, becoming the largest stadium in the country to attempt a “zero waste” initiative. Zero waste is a common term used to describe waste minimization efforts where 90% or more of post-consumer materials are diverted from the landfill. This is typically achieved through recycling and composting. The inaugural football season was a great success at Ohio Stadium, the tonnage of landfilled materials was reduced by 61.2% while the season’s diversion rate was increased by 28.8% a single-game diversion rate of 82.4% was also achieved. Moving forward, the program at Ohio Stadium will be the foundation for campus-wide zero waste efforts.

The author, Corey Hawkey is also a great resource if you have questions.

Claire and Breanna,

Something else to consider in your research is the impact of both event security and your state deposit laws on the material recovered.

At one of the schools for which I worked, we had U.S. Olympic trials on campus. The amount of bottles and cans that we recovered increased nearly ten-fold compared to the same time period for any other event in the stadium. Why? Not because our set up was any different, because our vending was significantly different, or because our attendees recycled more. It was primarily a function of event security.

The event security was so tight for the U.S. Olympic trials that the post-game scavengers that used to sneak into our stadium after most events to scavenge the bottle bill redeemable containers couldn't get in. It was a real eye opener for us about how much of an impact scavenging was on our event recovery rates.

I'm not suggesting that scavenging is a good or bad thing, I'm just saying that it has a distinct impact on post-game recycling that you should recognize in your planning. If you compare your results to results from other schools in non-bottle bill states, or from open-air stadiums vs. indoor stadiums you are likely to see a dramatic difference. You may also see a significant difference in your actual results from your planning-based expectations.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

Claire and Breanna,

VA Tech put together a Recycling Toolkit that was very helpful to us, in football and in other sports.

Here at UNC-Chapel Hill we also developed some Athletic Venue Guidelines that have been helpful as a roadmap when working with different facility managers, crews, etc.

Best of luck!
Natalia Posthill
UNC at Chapel Hill