Stadium Has No Recycling Program

Every game day, Memorial Stadium's recycling bins are filled with thousands of bottles and cans that end up mixed with other waste due to the lack of a coordinated recycling system at the facility.

The campus instead currently relies on the local transient and homeless populations, who scavenge through the dozens of recycling bins scattered around the football stadium and strip the trash bins of any glass bottles or cans, said Lisa Bauer, manager of Campus Recycling and Refuse Services.

"They're my little helpers," Bauer said. "I don't sanction it ... but even if I tried to stop them-and I have tried to stop them-it wouldn't help. I can't place a UCPD officer at every trash can."

The lack of formal recycling services at the stadium is a concern the campus is working to resolve, Bauer said.

Bauer said that five years ago, the campus tried to implement a recycling program by placing new recycling bins around the stadium, but most of them soon fell victim to vandalism in various forms.

"Those things were knocked over, lit on fire, smashed, thrown down the hill," she said.

Eventually the UCPD was forced to clear them away, as they posed more of an environmental hazard than a public service, Bauer said.

But the lack of a recycling system is unusual at UC Berkeley, which prides itself on its environmentally friendly policies.

In April, the campus unveiled an organic food bar in the Crossroads Dining Commons and is currently expanding the number of "green" suites and apartments in campus housing facilities.

The city of Berkeley also has a very thorough recycling policy, said Sarah Robinson, an employee at the Berkeley-based Ecology Center. Berkeley runs its own program to ensure that all materials are recycled, going so far as to hand-sort different-colored bottles, she said.

But the campus intends to catch up with the city by introducing a recycling program at the stadium in the near future, Bauer said.

The number of water bottles has spiked dramatically as attendance at stadium events has risen, and there is no infrastructure in place to deal with plastics, she said.

Together with Michael Huff, assistant athletic director of facilities, the campus applied to the California Department of Conservation's recycling division for $50,000 in funding.

The money would go towards state-of-the-art bins that can be folded and shuttled to and from the stadium on game days to maximize use and avoid abuse, Bauer said.

The campus hopes to hear back from the state by Sept. 15, she said.

The campus' eventual goal is to extend recycling programs to food waste, but this type of program expansion will take some time, Bauer said.

"We're taking it slow," Bauer said.

A correction to this article can be found here.

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