Here comes the broom

Each Sunday morning following home games, hundreds of students from Iowa City West High School, City High School, and Iowa City junior high schools join parents and staff volunteers at Kinnick Stadium to perform cleanup duty. These efforts help divert a substantial amount of waste from the landfill. Photo courtesy of UI Facilities Management.

Cleaning up after 70,000 football fans is no easy task. Thankfully, there is a team ready to tackle the job after each home game at Kinnick Stadium.

Each Sunday morning following home games, hundreds of students from Iowa City West High School, City High School, and Iowa City junior high schools join parents and staff volunteers at Kinnick Stadium bright and early to perform cleanup duty.

Armed with brooms, blowers, and bags, the students start at the top of the stadium seating and work their way down to the sidelines. Along the way, student recyclers gather water and soda bottles, cups, popcorn buckets, plastic food plates, paper trays, cardboard, and printed programs.

Nearly everything but food waste and contamination is recycled. In recent years, reducing and diverting stadium waste from the landfill has become a big part of the effort. The University recently achieved 51 percent game-day waste diversion, thanks to recycling efforts by university fraternities at the stadium gates and the post-game cleanup and recycling work of West High and City High students and coaches. 

High school athletic directors and coaches have been key partners in converting trash to recycling. The university has worked with Aramark, its primary concessions vendor, to provide food containers and packaging that are recyclable and with Waste Management, Inc. to provide equipment, drivers, and trucks to handle the increased recycling.

Volunteers from the Immanuel Lutheran Church of Washington, Iowa, help load the recyclables and trash into the trucks and perform the final cleanup on the stadium concourse as well.