Roaring fans, touchdowns, tackles and sustainability… Wait, sustainability? In the exciting world of collegiate athletics, sustainability might not always be the foremost thought when thinking about sports, but Cal Zero Waste and Cal Athletics are teaming up to tackle this issue head-on.
The UC Berkeley campus is known for its environmentally friendly initiatives including ReUSE, The Zero Waste Project, as well as implementing a policy to eliminate single-use plastics by 2030. In order to successfully achieve these goals, it will take the help of the campus community and will require opportunities where the campus can identify and improve sustainability initiatives. One of those opportunities is with the campus's athletic facilities.
Thankfully, some of the greatest advocates of sustainability within Cal Athletics are our student-athletes, like Cal lacrosse player Chloe Rand. Sustainable practices are not new to Rand, who grew up with environmentally conscious parents and opportunities to lead an eco-focused student organization while in high school. During her sophomore year at Berkeley, she founded Cal SAFE, a community for student-athletes who are passionate about the environment, conservation and sustainability.
Rand, who spends a majority of her time in Cal Athletics facilities, shared an insider’s perspective, explaining that they currently do not have a uniform waste collection and management system, but it’s an area of opportunity Cal SAFE hopes to address. The outdated infrastructure at some of the facilities poses a significant barrier to proper sorting and the diversion of landfill waste. Venues like Edwards Stadium and Stu Gordon Stadium are equipped only with large landfill bins instead of the multi-sorting bins located in Cal Memorial Stadium that feature recycling, compost and landfill options.
“It’s hard for people to see [behind the scenes], so I think that’s where I have an advantage because I’m in the day-to-day [operations] seeing what is going on,” says Rand. “That's where I come in… I help get Athletics up to speed with the rest of the campus in terms of sustainability goals, completing projects, getting more awareness about how we can help internally and finding the right people to talk to."
Through her campus connections, Rand was introduced to Jackie Schneider, a student program coordinator for Cal Zero Waste. Schneider was in the process of applying for the PepsiCo Sustainability Fund, a new campus partnership grant focused on impacting and advancing the university’s sustainability priorities and endeavors.
Schneider’s planned proposal would request funding for new, transportable “Max-R' 'bins that house separate sections for recycling, compost and landfill, and would easily allow them to be rotated between different facilities as needed. Seeing an opportunity to collaborate on a shared initiative, Rand wrote a letter of support for Schnieder’s request.
Sustainable solutions moving forward
This spring, Cal Zero Waste was informed that they had been awarded $9,000 from the PepsiCo Sustainability Fund. The funding allows for the purchase of three additional Max-R bins which were placed in athletic facilities beginning May 2024. The collaborative plan is to monitor the effectiveness of the new bins through waste audits which includes weighing the collected recycling, compost and landfill bags and comparing the weights across everything that is collected. The goal is to compare past waste aversion percentages to the new diversion data collected in the beginning stages of implementation this summer and into the fall semester.
Schneider is optimistic about the effectiveness of the new system, given that similar bins are already present in the concourse area at the biggest athletic facilities, Haas Pavilion and Cal Memorial Stadium. She shared that in February 2024, a waste audit conducted after a campus basketball game revealed that “about 90% of compost and recycling were diverted from landfill.” The newly funded bins would provide continued improvement, as the facilities using the older landfill bins currently do not divert any compost or recyclable material.
One on-going challenge Schneider hopes to address includes education to the campus and surrounding community due to the simple explanation that “people don’t know how to sort their trash properly.”
“We’re still kind of trying to see what works for people to get them to care, but we have a lot of tabling events planned for Caltopia, Cal Day and football and basketball games,” says Schneider. “The goal is to educate and then see how much waste we divert.”
In addition to tabling, Schneider notes they also plan to collect campus surveys on waste sorting, conduct waste education games at campus events, participate in education programming through campus groups including in the residential halls and at Golden Bear Orientation. There will also be signage on the bins with pictures and additional details of what items go in which slots to further encourage individuals to place the correct items in the correct sorting bins.
Rand notes how high initial costs of upgrading infrastructure or purchasing new products often puts campus groups in a bind and can delay project goals and deadlines due to lack of funding. However, grants from campus partners, like PepsiCo, are providing opportunities to support initiatives and projects. She expresses the importance of support from partners as “uplifting and energizing for organizations because you feel like you're actually making an impact rather than just talking about what you're going to do.”
PepsiCo, the official beverage partner of UC Berkeley, is not new to supporting campus sustainability programming and has been a crucial partner in aiding Cal Zero Waste and The Office of Sustainability initiatives in the past, including funding a successful waste disposal bin pilot program in student dorms in Fall 2022 and supporting the campus’s current on-site solar program in Summer 2022.
Additionally, through the shared efforts of campus organizations like Cal SAFE and Cal Zero Waste, tangible progress is being made on campus, including Cal Athletics achieving the campus's ambitious sustainability targets. This victory highlights the importance of ongoing collaboration between students, academia and industry in fostering environmental stewardship within the campus community.
For Rand, she’s excited to get Cal Athletics on par with the rest of campus, but more importantly, she wants to be able to share her passion for sustainability with others and continue to make a large impact across campus. She also acknowledges how the support from other organizations, like the Cameron Institute, the Haas Sustainability Task Force and Cal Zero Waste, are helping Cal SAFE meet its organizational goals.
“I'd love to partner with more organizations on campus and just grow this huge web of people I can connect with and connect people with and work together on all these projects,” says Rand. “I’d like to grow [the organization], get more student athletes involved in sustainability within Cal Athletics and just continue making an impact on our UC Berkeley community.”