During the spring 2023 semester, the iCAP Zero Waste Team submitted a recommendation for Facilities & Services and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics to jointly launch a pilot tailgate recycling program, beginning during the fall 2023 football season. On May 2, 2023, Director of Athletics Josh Whitman approved the recommendation, and on May 21, 2023, Facilities & Services Executive Director Ehab Kamarah also approved the recommendation. The Tailgate Recycling Program is an extension of the larger "Fighting Illini, Fighting Waste" initiative carried out in collaboration with Coca-Cola, which now houses both basketball and football waste-related initiatives. For this program, Coca-Cola has funded volunteer t-shirts, giveaway t-shirts, and 20 outdoor recycling bins to collect loose bottles and cans from tailgaters.

F&S will provide blue bags (the color Waste Transfer Station uses to identify trash bags that contain recyclable materials), which the DIA's parking lot supervisors will disseminate to tailgate participants when they are checking in by car. These bags will contain paper instructions stapled onto each bag. The attached paper will convey what recyclable materials can be placed in the blue bag (plastic bottles and aluminum cans are the target materials), and will include a tailgate lot map with locations of “collection hubs” (location at which a F&S recycling garbage pan is placed).

Student volunteers will be a crucial component of the program in its early stages, while F&S and DIA work to build the habit among tailgaters to recycle. Volunteers will be posted around the collection hub(s) and Grange Grove, engaging with tailgaters and providing education about what campus can recycle. In Grange Grove, 20 Coca-Cola recycling bins will be placed nearby the entry points to Memorial Stadium. The DIA has advised that the bins that will collect loose (non-bagged) recyclables will be most effective near the stadium, as visitors are finishing drinks before entering. The west side of the stadium is consistently the busiest.