When USC and Stanford met on the field of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Saturday, the Trojans dominated the Cardinal, winning their first conference bout of the year 56-10. While the game was decided early, another competition that matters just as much to the USC Athletic Department and Coliseum staff still hung in the balance.
USC attempted to hold its first zero-waste “Green Game” of the 2023 season as part of the PAC-12 Conference’s “Zero Waste Challenge.” With a color-coded garbage bag system, compostable cups, and fan-engaging scoreboard videos, the Coliseum put forward its plan to best promote sustainability during the Stanford game.
Since 2016, schools in the PAC-12 have competed with each other, attempting to host a zero waste home game during the football and basketball seasons. For the past four years, all 12 member schools of the conference have participated in the competition.
According to the PAC-12′s Team Green website, the competition “encourages campuses to move towards zero waste and be creative in developing best practices, whether it be directly through reuse, recycling, and composting or by working with partners to drive impactful changes.”
Nycoi Jones, a member of USC’s Environmental Student Assembly (ESA), partnered with the Coliseum staff and the USC Sustainability Group for this year’s zero-waste game through a class in USC’s Environmental Studies Program called Zero Waste Operations.
“These games and sports, they generate a lot of waste and a lot of it goes to trash,” Jones said. “So what zero waste games are supposed to be doing is basically allowing at least 90% of the total game trash towards the end of the cumulative year to get diverted from a landfill.”
With that end goal in mind, USC and the Coliseum needed to create stadium measures to control the flow of trash. One idea they devised was a color-coded trash bag system.
Jones also explained that the colored trash bags are only the start.
“They have a special trash sorting system where they sort through every single bag that’s produced during the game to make sure everything goes to the right facility,” Jones said.
Raegan Lusk, a junior studying international relations at USC, said that the university’s effort was apparent during the game.
“At tailgates, there were more recycling and trash bins than before and there was also a truck driving around picking up trash,” Lusk said. “At the game, I saw signs talking about the ‘Green Game’ and other stuff like that.”
When asked how she feels about USC’s sustainability efforts, Lusk said she is optimistic.
“I am really glad that USC is stepping up and trying to make campus in general more sustainable,” Lusk said. “I see a lot of trash on game days so I am happy about [the ‘Green Game’].”
The strategies weren’t as noticeable for everyone. Ryan Saywitz, a senior at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, attended the game and noticed nothing out of the ordinary from previous football games he’d been to.
“I wasn’t at the game for that long, but I didn’t really notice anything different,” Saywitz said.
USC’s main goal is to limit the negative impact of athletic events on the environment but, just like its teams on the field and court, the university is also participating to compete and win.
The rules of the zero waste program, which are laid out on the conference’s website, are strict but straightforward. Every campus gets to pick just one home football and basketball game each year to mount its attempt.
After the day has ended, the event is scored by a conference official using a carefully designed scorecard that includes categories such as the effective use of partnerships, fan engagement, and overall waste diversion.
At the end of the university year, a panel of judges deliberate over the scorecards and decide on a winner for both sports. The panel also hands out “Special Innovation Awards” to the most improved campus and to the schools with the best fan engagement and engagement from players and athletic department staff.
Since the start of the 2016/17 school year, USC has won the Zero Waste Challenge three times in football and one time in basketball. Two years ago, the university became the conference’s first to win both sports’ top placement in the same year.
No school has achieved a perfect zero waste football game since the program’s inception, but USC came the closest in 2016 with a reported 94% waste diversion rate.
UC Berkeley holds the conference record for basketball, registering a 95.7% diversion rate in 2018.
As USC waits for the PAC-12 to publish the results of this year’s competition, there is still more the school can do to improve its sustainability efforts.
“There is still about 10% [of undiverted waste], which is a lot of trash that still gets sent just to a landfill,” Jones said. “To an extent, I still think the system is commendable because it is the first of its kind… But I think USC can do a lot more and I think that if there’s more of a push from a student perspective, maybe they may actually go forth and implement some bigger changes.”
When asked about ways that students can help influence school sustainability, Jones emphasized the importance of reducing and reusing waste and recommended that students should read USC emails on sustainability and attend ESA and campus sustainability events.
USC and the Coliseum staff won’t know whether their efforts on Saturday earned them another conference award until the spring. Last year’s winner and Special Innovation Award recipients were announced in early May.