Ohio University placed first in diversion rate and ninth in total recycling.
The Ohio University football game against Western Michigan University may have been a loss for the Bobcats on Oct. 17, but it was a victory for recycling.
OU was named a national winner of the 2015 GameDay Recycling Challenge, a competition for colleges and universities to promote waste reduction at football games.
About 7,225 pounds were recycled and composted during the game against Western Michigan, with 22,000 fans in attendance, according to a university news release.
The overall competition involved 99 colleges and universities, which recycled or composted nearly 2.5 million pounds of game-day waste during the course of the fall season.
In total recycling, OU placed ninth in the competition with Louisiana State University coming out on top, according to the GameDay Challenge website.
OU placed first in diversion rate, with a rate of about 96 percent. Diversion rate measures recycling and organics recovery as a percentage of total trash.
Schools in the competition are ranked based on the quantity of recyclables, food organics and other materials diverted from the landfill at college football stadiums.
“Substantial progress has been made in moving major athletic events toward zero waste,” Ladd said in a news release. “Ohio University is again demonstrating to the nation that reducing what we send to the landfill to near zero levels is possible and valuable.”
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