Autzen scores low on trash recovery.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Lane County's fervent recyclers have accomplished some near miracles at long-standing, large community events, but they've found football at Autzen Stadium a tough forum to sort out.

Oregon Country Fair: The fair's Waste Warriors have achieved a nearly 90 percent waste recovery rate. Fair participants are so dedicated, they not only supply cloth diapers to mothers but take the soiled diapers back, wash and reuse them. For the past two fairs, recyclers attempted to banish plastic utensils by supplying washable metal knives, forks and spoons.

Lane County Fair: This more traditional fair has made stupendous recycling gains. A record 74 percent of its waste was diverted from the landfill this year. The fair uses compostible cups in its beer gardens, sets up recycling stations around the grounds and scoops 200 tons of animal waste into trucks bound for the compost heap.

Saturday Market: In 2005, the market took up composting and returned 21,050 pounds of compostible cups, vegetable peelings and paper to the land.

Eugene Celebration: This year, the fest produced 3 tons of garbage, 10 yards of compost and two-tenths of a ton of commingled recycling. Susan Truax, the celebration's recycling coordinator, vows to do better.

Willamette Folk Festival: The event's recycling crew has reached heights of 80 percent in past years. But this year's move from the UO to the Cuthbert Amphitheater, plus a last-minute decision by vendors to forgo compostible cups, dropped the festival's stellar record to 53 percent.

Art and the Vineyard: The four-day fest faltered this year when one of six, 12-yard recycling bins was rejected by the composting company because it was too contaminated with trash. Organizers said they were confused about whether to recycle or compost the clear, corn-starch-based cups. Also, somebody flipped garbage into the recycling when nobody was looking, event organizer Tim Flowerday said.

Autzen Stadium: The events that really get recyclers down in the mouth are the Ducks home football games. Saturday games draw close to 60,000 people and generate more than 15 tons of waste. "They're another big event. They can control their waste stream, but they have not - for a variety of reasons - decided to do it," said Alex Cuyler, city of Eugene recycling specialist.

But Gordon Burke, the UO athletic department operations manager, said stadium crews are doing the very best they can. "We do a pretty good job and we're continually taking a look at it to upgrade it, and that's what you want as a public."

At the start of this season, as part of the department's campaign to improve sportsmanship, the department hung up placards urging fans to "Take a Quack at Recycling" and "Keep Our Nest Clean."

But recycling at the stadium isn't easy. There are no recycling bins. The stadium had bins up until four years ago, Burke said, but took them out when fans, if they used them at all, used them for garbage. But mostly they littered.

"It's kind of funny, but people - believe it or not - they leave it right where they're sitting," he said.

A half-dozen years ago, city and county recycling pros teamed up with Campus Recycling officials to demonstrate to the athletic department just how much recycling could be gleaned from the stands after games.

`We said, `Hey, let's go down the aisles, but the first person down is going to collect nothing but plastic beverage containers, the second person down is going to collect nothing but newsprint, the third person down will collect nothing but compostible paper,' ' Cuyler said. "Doing that, we were actually able to recover quite a bit of material - but they never adopted it as a practice."

Burke said volunteer cleanup crews and stadium employees do recycle some. For example, Sanipac has collected 30 or 40 yards of plastic water bottles from the stadium after each of the first two home games this year.

"For the manpower that I have and the budget that I have, we do extremely well," Burke said.

- Diane Dietz