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February 8, 2008 > News > Campus prepares for RecycleMania

Campus prepares for RecycleMania

By Jocelyn Wright | Thresher Editorial Staff

While many Rice students may treat the blue bins in the corner of their dorm rooms like ordinary trash cans the RecycleMania contest hopes to change this.

RecycleMania is a 10-week nationwide intercollegiate recycling competition that started last week. Rice is entered into the paper, aluminum, glass and plastic recycling categories, as well as the waste minimization category. Rice is in its third year competing in RecycleMania, one of 400 colleges and universities participating across the nation this year.

During the competition, at the end of each week the Facilities, Engineering and Planning department collects the respective categories of recycling and weighs them. The data is then compiled and reported to the RecycleMania coodinators by Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson. The college with the highest recycling rate wins the competition.

“RecycleMania provides us with the opportunity to compare our current recycling performance versus previous years, while also allowing for some friendly rivalries to develop amongst in-state and peer institutions,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he is discussing the possibility of making this year’s RecycleMania a competition between residential colleges with the EcoReps. This idea is still in the early stages of planning, so there is no set proposal yet, Johnson said. Rice had a 27 percent recycling rate for the first week, which Johnson said is a good rate.

“My experience with RecycleMania is that it takes several weeks before you get a sense of how you’ll do versus other colleges,” Johnson said. “Nevertheless, if we were to maintain a recycling rate of 27 percent, we’d do well.”

The Environmental Club held a study break last Tuesday to promote awareness about Recyclemania with cinnamon rolls and recycling information. Sid Richardson College junior Jessica Coe, an Eco-Rep who is working to organize RecycleMania, said the club plans to hold another study break in the next few weeks.

“It can get confusing what types of plastic and what types of cardboard to recycle,” Coe said. “We’re just trying to let people know what they can recycle by getting that information out there.”

In an effort to raise awareness about waste minimization, the Environmental Club collected the disposables students used at both the North and South serveries in one meal. The club made a sculpture out of the discarded disposables to show students the amount of waste from a single meal.

“All of those materials were things people took in the cafeteria and just threw away,” Coe said. “They weren’t really using them for their purpose as take-out dishes, so we were just trying to raise awareness about that.”

Coe said the EcoReps were also responsible for raising awareness about RecycleMania at their individual colleges.

Johnson said when Rice participated in RecycleMania three years ago, it was the only school in the state of Texas to do so. This year, Texas has the third largest number of participants in RecycleMania, with 22 schools.

“I think this is indicative of the deepening environmental awareness at colleges across the [U.S.], including Texas,” Johnson said.

Wiess College freshman Kait Chura said she was excited Rice was participating in RecycleMania.

“I think recycling is really important for everyone in general and if this brings awareness to recycling there’s no reason for it to be discouraged,” Chura said. “It’s a really good opportunity for students of Rice to learn how to utilize the recycling we have.”

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