Story by: Zoe Marcum, FS Communications Student Assistant
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville prides itself on being a clean and sustainable campus, always striving for ways to improve and reduce its carbon footprint. The average college campus with 40,000 students (like UTK) can generate an average of 12,800 tons of solid waste annually. That’s more than 8,500 cars worth of waste that goes into already overflowing landfills. On top of that, nearly 75% of that waste is recyclable, yet isn’t sorted properly and instead sits with the rest of the trash waiting to be processed. How do you fix an issue like this? You work towards sorting waste so it can go to proper processing facilities before it ever gets a chance to go to the landfill. By sorting the waste as it is disposed of, the chance of potentially recyclable materials going to the landfill is eliminated. That is the goal of UTK with the Zero Waste agreement, to divert as much waste from going into the landfill as we can.
An educational institution like UTK generates a variety of waste, from aluminum in the soda cans to the paper handouts students receive in class. All of the different types of waste must be sorted and disposed of in unique ways that minimize pollution. Certain materials are sorted into bales, and the bales are sent off to the proper processing facilities that can dispose or reuse the material. Move-In at UTK can produce as much carboard waste as an entire football season in just a week. That leaves our Sustainability team scrambling to clean up tons of carboard waste generated by the residence halls before classes even start.
One of the biggest ways that UTK works to divert waste is through Zero Waste Gamedays. The UTK Office of Sustainability and Building Services work with volunteers to keep Neyland Stadium clean during games by performing sweeps the stadium’s interior and exterior along with directing fans on how to dispose of their waste properly. On average, ten to fifteen volunteers are brought on, and when combined with staff, that means that on average, twenty people are covering all ten acres of Neyland Stadium. Twenty people helping 150,000 to 200,000 people properly divert their waste in the heat of a football game. In the 2024 season, this small but mighty crew successfully diverted 56% of Neyland Stadium’s waste from the landfill using 95-gallon bins to collect waste from fans. They are replacing those with 66 new units to the stadium for the 2025 season. These new units are separated into landfill, plastic, and aluminum to help fans quickly sort their waste and hopefully divert even more than last season.
Wyatt Miner is the Outreach Coordinator for UTK Office of Sustainability, specializing in Zero Waste efforts. When asked about what the everyday student, staff, or Vol fan can do to help keep UTK campus clean, he said to “Make the effort to stand out from the people who don’t care”. He highlighted the simplicity of ensuring waste is sorted early on by utilizing the waste bins around campus, the positive implications of packing your own lunch, and bringing a reusable water bottle. Taking the time to throw your plastic water bottle into the plastics container and your paper takeout in the paper bin sorts the waste before anyone has to go through it. UTK has worked hard to be a sustainable campus and needs support from the students and faculty to help keep campus clean.