Recyclemania encourages students to go green

“Stevens doesn’t recycle,” “I didn’t know those aren’t trash cans,” and “There aren’t any recycle bins on my floor,” are all common arguments made by students here at Stevens. The truth is, however, Stevens does recycle and it has just signed up for RecycleMania, a fun and competitive new way of recycling. What started out as a competition between Miami University and Ohio University in 2001 has grown into a full-blown recycling war between over 500 schools. By 2009, every state was represented. Stevens is one of 14 participating New Jersey colleges.

Each week, reports are posted which display the amount of recycling done per capita, the amount of total recyclables, the amount of trash per capita, and the recycling rate for each college. The purpose of these weekly reports is not only for the schools to gauge how well they recycle, but also to add the competitive edge to the project. Reports of any school can be viewed, so comparing one school to another is quite simple. This healthy competition is the driving force behind RecycleMania: to get students to want to recycle by beating their rivals.

There are six goals for RecycleMania, which can be found very easily on their website, www.recyclemania.org/, along with a detailed description of how the results are calculated:

1. Have a fair and friendly recycling competition.
2. Increase recycling participation by students and staff.
3. Heighten awareness of schools’ waste management and recycling programs.
4. Expand economic opportunities while addressing environmental issues in a positive way.
5. Lower waste generated on-campus by reducing, reusing and recycling.
6. Have the competition act as a catalyst for colleges and universities to build and expand waste reduction programs on campus.

Programs like RecycleMania are utilized in today’s world to cut back on the amount of pollution humans are causing. College campuses are like little cities. Depending on the size of the campus there are any number of cafeterias, fast food restaurants, book stores, and dorms and apartments. Massive amounts of resources such as gas and water are used daily due to the amount of people using the facilities on campus. Students add to this pollution every day by doing very simple, preventable things. Styrofoam carry out containers are used in dining halls and then thrown away. Chinese take-out boxes are half finished, and then tossed in the trash. These containers can all be recycled, despite having already been used. Simply rinsing them off and tossing them in the recycling bin, as opposed to the trash, are the kinds of things RecycleMania encourages. Eighty percent of participating schools in RecycleMania have experienced an observable increase in recycling from the students on campus after the competition.

Source: thestute.com
By Emily Rautenberg