More on the Game Day Challenge

So I blogged a while back about the Game Day Challenge that UT competed in. I wanted to be able to announce the winner in one of my posts, but I don't think I'm going to have the opportunity. I spoke to Jay Price, the environmental coordinator for UT, and he said that the winner probably wouldn't be announced until mid-December. He did, however, tell me some interesting things that I wanted to share.

As I mentioned before, the South Carolina game was the one that was designated as the game day for the challenge. We did not have a particularly huge crowd for this game, but according to Jay, we recycled 12.5 tons. Our goal was 18 tons, so we didn't reach that, but even with a smaller crowd this year, we still increased by 2.5 tons compared to 2010's game. Also noteworthy is that this is the most we've ever recycled for one game! Jay said that we were close to recycling 50% of our waste this year (compared to 30% last year). And, Jay shared something else... he has an idea of who probably won the Game Day Challenge for the SEC..... drum roll...... UT! He doesn't know for sure just yet, but he said that he feels pretty good about the likelihood of UT winning first place.

I have several more numbers that I want to share and then I'll quit bragging about my awesome school... In the 2006 football season, we recycled 16 tons, followed by 18 tons in 2007, then 22 tons, 34 tons, 54 tons, and then probably 80 tons this year (that's a 5-fold increase over just 5 football seasons!!).

So obviously I am proud of UT for what we have achieved thus far. But we still have room for improvement: we currently recycle only 15% of our waste. Jay said that we could easily recycle 50% (or more!) of our waste. So, let's work on that next!