Game Plan for a Super Bowl of Recycling : Environment: Of the 50 tons of trash expected to be generated by fans at the Rose Bowl, 20 tons are to be collected in the largest such pick-up ever.

You’re one of those sports humbugs who always thought that football was garbage, and, by extrapolation, that the Super Bowl was the trashiest spectacle of the year. Well, you could be right.

Come Super Bowl Sunday in Pasadena, voracious fans at the game and accompanying tailgate parties and the National Football League commissioner’s fetes are expected to produce 50 tons of empty soda cans and plastic beer glasses, hot dog wrappers, soiled napkins, crumpled aluminum foil and discarded commemorative programs--enough to cover a football field four feet deep.

But you can rest easier this week because the NFL finally has decided to clean up the game--with a little help from the city of Pasadena and the state Department of Conservation.

An estimated 20 tons of the spectator debris from Super Bowl XXVII will be collected in the largest stadium recycling effort undertaken to date in the country. Fans will be confronted with 400 recycling bins throughout the Rose Bowl stadium, from the nosebleed seats all the way down to the luxury boxes.

Recycling is deeply entrenched in most Americans’ lives, and the state of California figures that 89% of all beverage containers are collected and cashed in--most of them from residences, restaurants and offices. When it comes to recycling while relaxing, however, most of the nation tends to pass.

“But this is a good example of recycling where we play, as well as where we live and work,” Edward G. Heidig, director of the state Department of Conservation, said Monday at a Rose Bowl news conference as he unveiled plastic recycling bins and cavorted with Recycle Rex, the department’s dinosaur mascot.

For Pasadena, the massive effort is a necessary move toward fulfilling a state mandate that requires all communities to reduce their waste stream 25% by 1995 and 50% by 2000. For the sports world, it is the first productive way of talking trash and promoting a new brand of environmentally sportsmanlike conduct.

The Department of Conservation has been working with California sports teams and stadiums for the last three years, encouraging “recycling days” promotions such as the Dec. 27 effort at the Los Angeles Rams-Atlanta Falcons game at Anaheim Stadium. But the movement is in its infancy.

Most stadium recycling efforts have records with success rates more like the New England Patriots’ (2-14) than, say, the Dallas Cowboys’ (13-3). Anaheim Stadium recycles, but only glass containers. The Forum in Inglewood will unveil a program in February. A plan for collecting and separating cans, bottles and other recyclables is nearing completion at Arco Stadium in Sacramento.

Because recycling at stadiums is so new, the athletics world is at a loss as to which sport spawns the most garbage. This week, of course, most would probably vote in favor of football.

“With the whole tailgate thing and then going into the stadium, they generate a lot of garbage,” said Rick Smith, the Rams’ director of public relations who is on Super Bowl duty this week.