UT to produce first ‘Zero Waste’ sporting season through composting

Starting on March 3, UT will begin its first “Zero Waste” sporting events with the 2023 Lady Vol softball season. In a joint effort with UT’s Office of Sustainability, UT Athletics and Eco-Products with Aramark, concessions will be completely replaced with compostable or recyclable items, diverting 90% of waste generated this softball season away from the landfill. This is the first time in UT’s history that this initiative is taking place on such a large scale.

During the more than 20 home games in Sherri Lee Parker stadium this spring, everything will be recycled or composted by the Office of Sustainability. Wyatt Miner, compost logistics assistant for the Compost Facility, along with many others, has been working with Eco-Products and Aramark to get compostable materials for the upcoming season.

“‘Zero Waste’ has been a target for this university for years, but this will be the first fullscale attempt to eliminate the landfill waste stream for the stadium entirely,” Minder said.

There have been attempts at “Zero Waste” game days advertised at Neyland Stadium, though they have not achieved the diversion goal of 90%. However, this upcoming softball season will truly be zero waste. To get this target within a more achievable range, the Office of Sustainability brought down the scale and created a plan and practice.

“For this project, I had to get in touch with Aramark and Eco-Products to help switch the non-compostable concession items to fit into the compostable waste stream,” Miner said.

“Our team had to take inventory of the concession items that were in place and then determine if they fit into the compostable waste stream. If they were non-compostable, we had to find compostable alternatives.”

Wayne Koeckeritz, a product and zero waste specialist with Eco-Products joined in to help the vision become a reality.

“The goal on these types of projects is to get everything collected and then composted,” Koeckeritz said. “UT has a great opportunity because they have their own commercial composting site right there on campus. That’s not common. It is great that they are able to take full advantage of the opportunities that are already there.”

But what exactly is the motivation for all of this? Koeckeritz, a self-proclaimed “dirt nerd,” gets down to, quite literally, the nittygritty of the benefits of zero waste.

“When you put food in a landfill, that’s what creates all of your methane,” Koeckeritz said. “If we can get the food out of the landfill, we do a couple of different things: we reduce the methane emissions from those landfills, and we take and make a product compost at the end, which is fantastic for sequestering carbon. Rather than giving up a form of it in methane, it can actually sequester carbon. But it also is a fantastic soil additive.”

The change is also proving beneficial to more than just the ecosystem, but the economics on Rocky Top too.

“In changing the materials and procedures in which we handle waste, we found that it will actually save the university money,” Miner said.

Starting around the diamond in Sherri Lee Parker stadium, with the power of sports in their back pocket, the Office of Sustainability’s ultimate goal is to have it extend to all areas of sports and campus, from Thompson-Boling to Lindsey Nelson and of course, Neyland Stadium. Still, it is a step-at-a-time process.

“You can imagine that a Neyland Stadium football game, when you’re trying to recover from 100,000 fans, how challenging that can be. I applaud UT for trying to say, ‘Let’s get proof of concept in a smaller venue and then let’s see if we can continue to expand that out until we get to the point where we’re ready to do it in Neyland,’” Koeckeritz said.