RecycleMania is underway

RecycleMania 2017 is off to a sizzling start at Radford University.

Just weeks into the competition, campus participants have recycled 27,600 pounds of single stream and cardboard items.

The competition kicked off with a two-week preseason on Jan. 22, and the first official week began Feb. 5.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities in their campus communities.

Over an eight-week period this spring, colleges across the United States and Canada will report the amount of recycling and trash collected each week on their respective campuses, and in turn, are ranked in various categories based on which schools recycle the most on a per-capita basis. Schools are also rated by which have the best recycling rate as a percentage of total waste and which schools generate the least amount of combined trash and recycling.  

With each week’s updated ranking, participating schools follow their performance against other colleges and use the results to rally their campus to reduce and recycle more.

The RecycleMania objective is to motivate students and staff to increase recycling efforts and reduce waste generation. It also strives to generate attention and support for campus recycling programs and encourage college and universities to measure and benchmark recycling activity.

“At Radford University, we’re using RecycleMania as a platform for raising awareness about recycling on campus,” said Sustainability Manager Josh Nease. “In collaboration with Residence Life, the Radford University Sustainability intern and sustainability reps are going into each residence hall for two hours surrounding lunch hours, inviting students to recycle and to participate in recycling activities. We also want to educate students about our university’s recycling program.”

In addition, Nease noted that the campus is “gearing up for the RecycleMania residence hall competition during the final week of the competition,” March 27 – March 31. “During this time, the residence halls will compete in a per-capita recycling competition against each other and the residence hall with the most recycled material will be awarded pizza.”

All pizza boxes will be recycled, Nease said.

On America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, Radford University switched to a single-stream recycling system, which means recyclers should place paper, plastic and glass into a common container instead of separate recycling bins.

For RecycleMania and beyond, the entire campus community is encouraged to pitch in their mixed paper, mixed containers and cardboard in the recycling bins located across campus.

To learn more about the competition and campus recycling, contact Nease at 540-831-5223 or jnease@radford.edu.