Big crowds at the University of Michigan's (U-M) "Big House," Michigan Stadium, create a great deal of waste, but also a lot of opportunities to promote sustainability initiatives. An
expansion of the Big 10 football conference means more traveling for the Michigan Wolverines as well, and U-M may soon consider ways to address the expanded carbon footprint that traveling creates.
Zero Waste stadium project
U-M's Zero Waste stadium program started in 2016 as part of then-university President Mark Schlissel's initiative to work toward campus sustainability goals, with a particular focus on keeping items out of landfills, says Alison Richardson, sustainability program manager for U-M's Office of Campus Sustainability.
Richardson says her office worked closely with U-M's athletics department and concession providers like Sodexo to examine waste practices and survey all the different types of products sold at the stadium during the 2016 football season. U-M's stadium is the largest football stadium in the United States and can accommodate about 100,000 fans.
After that trial season, the university made changes to materials sold at the stadium and rolled out the Zero Waste stadium project in 2017. Today, a small amount of landfill waste is produced by concession stands, but Richardson says that the stadium has switched to more sustainable products in all fan-facing areas and the
recycling or composting rate is about 90%. That means a vendor may throw away some plastic wrapping for a product, but all plates, utensils, containers, and other food packaging that fans purchase can be diverted from landfills either by recycling or composting.
Since then, Richardson says U-M staff have continued to tweak the program, most recently adding signage that makes it extra clear which items go in recycling bins and which go in composting bins. About half the compostable materials go to Ann Arbor's composting site, and the other half is composted on U-M's own campus farm.
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Doug CoombeU-M Office of Campus Sustainability Sustainability Program Manager Alison Richardson.
Richardson says the athletics department has also looked at reducing the number of disposable pom-poms and other disposable souvenirs its staff hand out at games. Additionally, interns and volunteers will be posted near waste stations during games to help anyone who has questions about where to dispose of their waste items.
Ann Arbor-based environmental nonprofit ZeroWaste.org included the stadium on its annual Trash Talk Tour in 2024, an event that invited the public to learn more about Zero Waste efforts around Ann Arbor. It included a
tour of the city's Materials Recovery Facility, a bike tour of various Zero Waste business partners in Ann Arbor, and a Zero Waste Fall Festival at Kiwanis Thrift Sale.
Zero Waste co-founder Samuel McMullen says he's excited about including the Big House on the tour since it's so highly visible. Fans who might never have thought about composting or sustainability efforts will be prompted to consider what happens to all that trash they're generating.
"They know about the Big House and U of M football, and the scale of the event going on. And it gives people a chance to peek behind the curtain and figure out what you do with all that trash," McMullen says.
"One of the levers we found in helping people understand the issue of waste is having them put on what we call 'trash goggles' for a week," McMullen says. "Once you start paying attention, you're going to realize that at the stadium, wow, of course that's 100,000 people's worth of trash."
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Doug CoombeMichigan Stadium.
McMullen applauds U-M's efforts at the stadium but notes that most policies are focused on diverting trash from landfills, that "recycle" portion of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra of sustainability. But the biggest benefits come from reducing and reusing, and he says he'd like to see U-M exploring more of those options.
"It's a huge challenge but also a huge opportunity for reuse," McMullen says. "We've seen some stadiums trying out reuse projects, like buying beer in a reusable cup that can be dropped in a bin. That nixes hundreds of thousands of disposable cups in one fell swoop."
Richardson says the university is looking at additional changes, but switching to reusable containers would be pretty challenging.
"In theory, it would be great, down the line," she says. "Those are conversations that need to be had with stakeholders, including Athletics and Sodexo."
Big 10 expansion
Graduate students at the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems recently published a study suggesting the Big 10’s 2024 expansion
will more than double the average conference game emissions compared to emissions from 2010 to 2023.
Study authors Paige Greenberg and Molly Russell modeled their study on Arizona State University research on emissions from the Power Five conference.
"Paige and I are really big football fans, and we're master's students at the Center for Sustainable Systems, so we jumped at the opportunity to combine our two big interests and passions," Russell says.
"We found there was an increase in emissions after the 2024 conference expansion, roughly 2.3 times for the University of Michigan, and for opponents that come to the Big House, it increased about 2.6 times."
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Doug CoombeU-M Center for Sustainable Systems grad student Molly Russell.
Those amounts only include team members' and support staff's travel, not fan travel. But fan travel is likely contributing higher emissions as well. For example, Russell says the University of Texas game against U-M was a huge fan draw, with several private planes full of fans arriving that week. Russell says that weekend saw "a huge pickup in traffic at the Ann Arbor airport."
While the report largely focused on analyzing data, it included a general recommendation as well.
"The University has a say in who they play, and they pay teams well over $1 million to come to the Big House and play here," Greenberg says. "Because the University of Michigan is purchasing a good, they should take some responsibility for [emissions by] other teams coming here."
U-M students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in the UMich Zero Waste Challenge, organized by a student group, the week of Feb. 16-22. Participants are asked to avoid creating trash, and to collect and evaluate any waste they do create throughout the week.
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Doug CoombeU-M Center for Sustainable Systems grad student Paige Greenberg.
Zero Waste Week also includes themed events for each day, a partnership with libraries, exhibits about textile waste, and a scavenger hunt with prizes.
Click here for more information about the UMich Zero Waste Challenge.
Richardson acknowledges that "a lot of waste" is created during a football game.
"But, in the grand scheme of things, it's a really visible opportunity to talk about waste and have people thinking about waste," Richardson says. "We're demonstrating it's something important to the University of Michigan and to Athletics when they see the effort that goes into that program. We're reaching a big, diverse audience from everywhere, and we get them thinking."
Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township and the project manager of On the Ground Ypsilanti. She joined Concentrate as a news writer in early 2017 and is an occasional contributor to other Issue Media Group publications. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.
Photos by Doug Coombe.