Auburn University’s Office of Sustainability will be hosting its annual Green Game this upcoming gameday as Southern Miss comes to town for Homecoming on Sept. 29.
Since 2005, the Office of Sustainability has partnered with Auburn Athletics and the waste reduction and recycling department to promote greener game days.
With every home football game, football fans from across the country line the concourse and streets of campus to enjoy the beloved sporting event. But, the Office of Sustainability believes with every football game, there also comes the responsibility to take care of the area around tailgates in order to keep Auburn as the loveliest village on The Plains.
The Green Game strives to inform and continue to keep fans recycling aluminum cans, cardboard and plastic throughout the duration of the game.
“We choose to promote a Green Game here at Auburn to bring awareness to the efforts of sustainability related to athletics,” said Jennifer Morse, outreach and communication manager of the Office of Sustainability.
With several hundred recycling locations set up inside and outside the stadium, the volunteers of the Green Game look to make it as easy as possible for everyone to take part in conserving the Auburn community.
This year's Green Game will also feature numerous refillable water stations in the stadium to help reuse plastic bottles.
For the second year in a row, the Green Game will also be promoting the appearance of volunteers as “Trash Talkers.” The volunteers will be helping during the first half of the football game and will be located at the recycling stations to help advise fans on what to recycle and where to recycle it.
“By trying to get people to recycle more and recycle correctly, we are trying to lower contamination rates on campus during game days,” Morse said.
During the 2017 football season, fans were able to recycle 35 tons of material. With the help of students and the Auburn fan base, the Office of Sustainability wants to raise that number even higher by the end of the 2018 season.
Aside from the various ways that fans will be able to recycle before and during the game, the Office of Sustainability will be showing a brief video of several other ways that Auburn has taken action to promote going green on campus.
The video on the jumbotron will showcase the LED lighting that can be found in Plainsman Park as well as new features to the Auburn Arena that have been made to reduce energy. It will also even show brief clips from the time that Auburn’s football team spent in the Dominican Republic to build water filters for clean drinking water.
Katie Duncan, student intern for the Office of Sustainability, said that Green Games don’t have to stop after this year's Green Game.
“This is a great stepping stone to creating every football game throughout the season to be a Green Game," Duncan said. "We want fans to take the Green Game as a learning experience and come back with the same teaching tools to recycle at every Auburn football game.”
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