A group will collect waste at tomorrow's football game as part of a semester project designed to help the environment.

Doing Innovative Recycling Today (D.I.R.T.) is comprised of Jack Matson's freshmen seminar, Civil Engineering 100T (Topics and Contemporary Issues in Civil and Environmental Engineering: Environmental Leadership). Students were given the assignment to come up with a creative strategy to help the environment.

Tomorrow, the students will be collecting tailgaters' food waste for composting, a more environmentally friendly method of garbage disposal.

The class is based on the principles in Matson's book Innovate or Die, which the students were given to read at the beginning of the course.

After discussing the book, students came up with three ideas for projects, and then narrowed them down to this one. Matson runs the class on the idea of "sink or swim." Students described him as more of a mentor than a teacher, in that he won't interject, but rather directs the focus of discussion instead of leading it.

"We let them have control. They had to figure out what they were going to do, how they were going to do it and when they had done it," said Sarah Gingrich (graduate-environmental engineering), a teaching assistant.

To begin their project, the students met with Al Matyasovsky, supervisor of central support services within the Office of Physical Plant, to tour Beaver Stadium and find out more about its waste management program, specifically OPP's composting services.

The students' plan includes distributing fliers explaining the project, and handing out brown bags to tailgaters in the north parking lot. The fliers specifically say that only food waste can be placed in the bags — no plastic, cans, bottles, glass or styrofoam. Tailgaters are instructed to place the brown bags in tubs marked with the word "DIRT," located in various spots in the parking lot.

The students also made large blue and white signs that say "food waste only" that will be placed above the bins so tailgaters can find them easily. All of the students involved with the project will be wearing blue and white shirts that say: "Keep your Beaver Stadium beautiful."

After the bags are collected, the students are planning to sort through every piece of waste to make sure that only waste that can be composted has been collected. OPP services will collect the bags and transport them to the composting site where other campus waste is taken. The garbage collected from tomorrow's game will be put in a separate area so the students can see how much is collected by them alone.

The students first tested their project at the game against the University of Michigan on Oct. 6. The pilot program didn't run as smoothly as the students had planned, and since then they have made some adjustments that they hope will improve the project for this weekend. Additions such as more signs, more people present around the bins and the parking lot and more voicing of the project to the tailgaters are the focus for improvement.

"I'm impressed with how much we have actually done and how it's all come together," said Laura Owen (freshman-division of undergraduate studies).

The students plan to set up the project at the remainder of the home games. They hope that with success in the next four games, Matson will use their example to continue and expand the program with his freshmen for next fall's football season.

David Rizk (freshman-engineering) said, "This is a quality program and if every student at Penn State worked as hard as we did to help the environment, this would be a better place."