The University of Central Florida will be participating in the nationwide Game Day Challenge this weekend as a backdrop to the Knights’ Homecoming football game against the Rice Owls on Saturday, Oct. 23, at 3:30 p.m. at Bright House Networks Stadium.
The 2010 Game Day Challenge, hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a friendly competition between colleges and universities across the country to reduce, reuse, and recycle during football games.
Competitors in the 2010 Game Day Challenge were charged to design a waste reduction plan for a home football game within October and report the amount of waste generated and recycled, as well as the number of attendees at the game. Schools can collect most common materials for recycling during the challenge – including paper, all beverage containers, cardboard, and food to be donated or composted.
Awards will be given out in November to the schools with the least amount of waste generated per attendee, greatest greenhouse gas reductions, highest recycling rate, highest organics reduction rate (food donation and composting), and highest combined recycling and composting rate.
Green Your Game is an initiative performed under the partnership of the Student Sustainability Alliance (SSA) and UCF Recycles. The Student Sustainability Alliance aims to unify the student body as a whole in an effort to create a more sustainable community. Students volunteer their time to increase recycling at pre-game tailgating activities by raising awareness about the importance of recycling, replacing liners in recycling bins, and cleaning up recycling after tailgating ends.
Since beginning Green Your Game, there has been an increase of more than 10 percent in tailgating area recycling at UCF.