RecycleMania comes to UConn for second year

By: Michelle Firestone

Posted: 2/2/09

UConn kicked off its second year of participation in the RecycleMania competition on Jan. 18.

According to the official RecycleMania Web site, 510 schools currently participate in the competition, which aims to encourage college students to reduce waste and increase recycling.

The competition is structured differently than last year, and schools now register in either the competition or benchmark division. Participants in the competition division will be aiming to place first in the competition's various categories - which include recyclable materials collected per capita and per campus - while those in the benchmark division will be participating "just for fun", said Alysse Lembo, an 8th-semester natural resources major and the Office of Environmental Policy intern in charge of the competition.

There are 333 participants in the competition division, including UConn. Lembo, who is pleased with the university's results last year, said they are hoping for improvement, but have no specific placement goal in mind.

"Last year was a learning experience for us," she said. "We are hoping to step it up this year."

UConn placed at or above the 50th percentile for all categories they participated in 2008, according to the EcoHusky Web site. The university did the best in the Gorilla category - which recognizes the school which recycles the greatest gross tonnage of trash, unadjusted for campus population - where UConn placed in the top 16 percent of schools and recycled about 39,000 pounds of trash.

EcoHusky's primary target this year is the Waste Minimization category, a category in which the university did not participate in the previous year. The category stresses the importance of reducing original waste sources and reusing materials, rather than simple recycling.

"We've been onboard with recycling," Lembo said. "Now we want to focus on reduction of waste."

Richard Miller, the director of the Office of Environmental Policy, said via e-mail that the trayless initiative in the dining halls has reduced food waste by about 30 percent.

EcoHusky, UConn's student environmental group, will hold a number of events as part of the competition, including "Man the Can" and "Trash-Can Diving," two events they held during Green Week last November. During "Man the Can," EcoHusky volunteers sit by the recycle bins and let the students know which materials are recyclable and which aren't. "Trash Can Diving" is when EcoHusky volunteers root through the aforementioned cans to retrieve recyclable materials.

"We find that a lot of students don't know what's recyclable," Lembo said. "We can't fault them for not recycling properly."

The university increased its recycling efforts after last year's competition. They have begun recycling at athletic events, like the men's and women's basketball games. Also, ResLife has introduced the reusable bags in the dormitories to help students collect recyclable materials.

Miller feels that recycling is an important part of the green initiative.

"Recycling is sort of the entry-level behavior to a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle," he said via email.

The contest, which lasts for 10 weeks, officially began yesterday. The first two weeks, called "trial" weeks, are designed to familiarize the schools with the system, and the results for this period don't count toward the final total. RecycleMania will end on March 28.