During a recent holiday, I was surprised to see that the Chicago White Sox had a policy for encouraging fans at US Cellular Field to recycle their bottles and cups.
The policy states:
“Recycling Bring your plastic bottles or cups to Sections 110 and 154 by the top of the 7th Inning. For every 10 items fans collect, they will receive one coupon good for fun prizes! Prizes can be redeemed at the Waste Management Redemption Booth located by Section 132. Think Green. Think Waste Management”.
I thought that the option of a prize for returning bottles and cups would be well received but judging from the seat in front, there were no immediate takers as you can see from my photograph.
There is no mention of the recycling rate of the waste left in the stadiums, so I trust that there was a large flurry of recycling in the post-game period.
There is still greater potential to make further in-roads into recycling at sporting events as the London Olympics 2012 have shown but the right behaviour message must be given that recycling is the norm and not an add-on to the sporting event.
It will be interesting to see what improvements have been made at other sporting events over the next 12 months using the lessons learnt from the London Olympics 2012.