BY THE NUMBERS

Game Day Challenge 2011 at Aggie Stadium took place Nov. 12, when UC Davis played North Dakota (the Aggies lost 14-7).

• Attendance: 7,726
  
• Total waste: 955 pounds
• Waste per capita: 0.124 pounds
• Recycled and composted: 894 pounds
• Diversion rate: 93.61 percent (first place)
• Recycled, per capita: 0.0364 pounds
• Composted, per capita: 0.0793 pounds

THE CHALLENGE

Seventh-five colleges and universities around the country competed in five categories. Here are the winners:

• Waste minimization — Central Connecticut State University, 0.059 pounds per person. UC Davis placed second, at 0.124 pounds.

• Diversion rate — UC Davis, 89.83 percent, followed by the University of Colorado at Boulder, 87.91 percent, and Ohio University, 82.82 percent, in second and third place, respectively.

• Greenhouse gas reduction —University of Virginia, 67.84 metric ton carbon dioxide equivalent (0.001877 MTCO2E per person). UC Davis placed 63nd, at 0.66 MTCO2E (0.000086 MTCO2E per person).

• Recycling — University of Virginia, 0.779 pounds per person. UC Davis placed 67th, at 0.036 pounds per person.

• Organics reduction (composting) — Marist College, 0.713 pounds per person. UC Davis placed fifth, at 0.079 pounds per person.

UC Davis is the waste diversion champion for the second year in a row in the EPA’s WasteWise Game Day Challenge — in which schools endeavor to make their football stadiums the greenest in the country.

The Aggies took top honors in the recently completed 2011 football season for keeping the highest percentage of stadium waste out of the landfill (by diverting the waste to recycling and composting) on a single game day.

Seventy-five colleges and universities competed in the 2011 challenge, and each school chose its own game day. The Aggies participated on Nov. 12 (UC Davis vs. North Dakota), achieving a 93.61 percent diversion rate.

The Aggies scored first in the same category a year ago, which marked UC Davis' first time in the contest. Last year's winning percentage: 89.83 percent.

Michelle La, coordinator of the Davis campus's Waste Reduction and Recycling Program, noted that other colleges and universities are gaining on UC Davis. "But we still did it," she said in a note of congratulations to her team.

"We will strive for 100 percent for the next season," La added.

UC Davis improved to second place in waste minimization, 0.124 pounds per person; and held onto fifth place in organics reduction (composting), 0.079 pounds per person.

The EPA tallied total attendance of 2.7 million people at the 2011 game days, and the participating colleges and universities diverted nearly 500,000 pounds of stadium waste — preventing more than 810 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released.

This reduction in greenhouse gases, according to the EPA, equates to taking 159 passenger cars off the road for a year.

Sustainability conference: Call for proposals

Proposals are due by next Jan. 20 from people interested in making presentations at this year’s California Higher Education Sustainability Conference. It is being held at UC Davis for the first time, June 18-21.

The conference, jointly organized by the UC and California State University systems, California community colleges, and private colleges, highlights cutting-edge case studies as well as research, curriculum development and community partnerships.

In calling for proposals, the organizers said they are seeking speakers who have crossed silos within their institutions to create sustainable change, infuse concepts of sustainability into curriculum, and/or to pursue research questions related to sustainability — especially in cases in which the research has or could be applied to campus sustainability.

“We are especially excited about proposals where a connection has been made across academic and operational departments,” the organizers said.

The conference website is here and the call for proposals is here.