October 22, 2009 - The Knoxville Civic Coliseum - in partnership with the Knoxville Ice Bears and the Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee�s AmeriCorps Volunteers � will launch an ambitious new recycling program at the Ice Bears� home opener Friday night.

�This is something that we have been looking at getting into. The Ice Bears wanted to do it and actually put together the meeting with the city and county folks,� said Dale Dunn, general manager of the Civic Auditorium and Coliseum. �So we�re very excited about this and looking forward to working with the AmeriCorps group to establish the program. We think it�s going to be very successful.�

The Ice Bears play the Huntsville Havoc at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night at the Civic Coliseum.

The effort will focus on collecting plastic bottles and cups and aluminum cans generated by the concession sales as well as cardboard from the concession stand vendor.

The project at the Coliseum offers Ice Bears fans another opportunity to recycle and joins a growing list of other events held in city facilities or sponsored by the City of Knoxville that offer recycling programs. Those include Sundown in the City, Earth Fest and Knoxville�s Earth Day celebration.

Developing a recycling program at the Civic Coliseum is one of the goals set by the AmeriCorps volunteers for community projects this year.

�Recycling any amount of material and will lessen our carbon footprint and contribute to helping the environment by using less of our natural resources and produce less air and water pollution,� said John Homa, City of Knoxville Solid Waste Project Manager. �We are appreciative of the support we get from the volunteers in all their projects. The recycling program will start out as a learning exercise for the volunteers and coliseum staff and will expand to other events at the coliseum.�

The materials collected will be processed for recycling by Rock-Tenn Recycling, a local recycler that processes the materials from the city�s Recycling Drop Off Centers as well as materials from local businesses.

The coliseum recycling program is being sponsored by the City of Knoxville�s Office of Solid Waste, a part of the city�s Public Service Division. The city is grateful to the Knoxville Ice Bears; Knox County Office Solid Waste Department; Knoxville-Knox County CAC AmeriCorps Volunteers; Rock-Tenn Recycling and the coliseum staff for making this project possible.