Sustainability at NMSU Athletics

New Mexico State University is a publicly funded university located in sleepy Mesilla Valley. Being a mix of a retirement town and a college town there is often two very different crowds in public here in Las Cruces. These crowds have different interests and one crowd is often seen at the golf course on a quiet Thursday afternoon, while the other frequents Rad Retrocade on a rowdy Satuday night. Being so different from each other one would ask, "In what possible way would these crowds ever interact with each other, and have the entire city of Las Cruces come together?".

That answer would be any sports games featuring your New Mexico State Aggies.

When asked to write about something that both hit close to home and was also tied to environmental sustainability, I did some digging around the facilities that I am around every day of the week. Because you see, I myself am a student-athlete here at NMSU.

Afer attending school here for four years, there was a lot that I learned on and off the field. Do not ever have too much Taos cafeteria food in one day. Check out the pond located on campus. Walk down the main sidewalk that is located right next to the dorms for a beautiful day stroll. The giant bell near the engineering department tolls quite loudly. Always make sure to tightly tie your cleats before you head out on the field during a game because there will be only rare times you are able to tie your shoes again. And the last thing I learned was, our facilities do not have nearly enough recycle bins.

After looking at NMSU's sustainablity  page , I had an alarming find. The annual report regarding sustainability at NMSU had not been released since 2017. It seemed to be a semi-regular release until that point in which it stopped. Another find was that the @nmsu_sustainability page on Instagram had not released any new information since last year. You can still find resources for recycling on the sustainability page but why did all of these resources go dark? This was something that I hoped to find out before my final report in May.

So with relatively no help online surrounding information into Aggie Athletics and recycling, I got my boots on the ground and did some work.

These 3 sites are the primary sports grounds for the teams that bring in the most attendance every year. Aggie Memorial Stadium is the largest out of the three and because of my membership on the football team, I was permitted to check the grounds. Aggie Memorial host's four to five trashcans in its stadium with no recycling bins in site. This is in the off-season so it may differ later on but for now, all of the football teams recyclables during practice goes straight into trash bins. The football facilities themselves host only two recycling bins near the printers. The lockerroom is desolate of recycling bins. The soccer field had a single recycle bin around its premises and the baseball field had two recycling bins near the field.

As a student-athlete here at NMSU, I produce around 5-6 items a day that are recylable but I instead throw them in the trash. The majority of this reason is because of the lack of availability with recycle bins around our facility. A typical workout tends to see me use about 3 cups of water out of a paper cup, 2 protein shakes that are made out of cardboard, and 1-2 protein bars wrapped with plastic. Mulitply this by around 95 athletes and you have about the number of recyclables that are being improperly disposed of every DAY. And to top that off, that is one team that occupies the weight room. This number also does not put into account the amount of paper that sports teams usually use in a day.

If you were to look up recyling process on Google, you would be pressed to find an article or picture that did not articulate that gathering of the recylables is often the first step in a long process. If we here at NMSU struggle to even find a place for people to dispose of our recyclables safely, then administration is not doing their job.

He can be reached at: chancellor.arvizu@nmsu.edu

Getting in contact with school administration would be the best way to express concern for the recycling issue within NMSU athletics. Being a single student, it is difficult to attract an audience with such a busy individual but with increased support from students and student-athletes alike, we can get the ball rolling on some serious change.

Starting an initiative here to get athletes to think about recycling even a little bit more than they had in the past would be a significant change in what we have been doing here. If by association of getting these athletes to think about their waste footprint there is some funding that comes out of this proposal for possible additions to recycling bins to facilities, I would also categorize this as a win for environmental sustainability. Communication is key in sports, and in life, and I believe with the right people and the right initiative, we can tackle this problem together.