RecycleMania has swept universities nationwide, with more than 6.5 million people competing to help the earth, one step at a time.
RecycleMania is a 10-week program that begins in January and is designed to promote waste reduction on college campuses by tallying the total recyclables collected per student and comparing them to other colleges.
Nick Hennessy, the sustainability coordinator and the adviser of the University’s RecycleMania program, said the University has been a major competitor in the program in previous years.
“Bowling Green was one of the founding schools involved in RecyleMania when there was only nine or 10 participating schools,” Hennessy said. “Now there are over 600 universities involved in the program. In 2002 and 2003 we actually ended up winning with 52.5 pounds collected per student.”
Since the program has expanded, RecyleMania has added different competition categories ranging from bottles and cans, paper, total recyclables collected and a bench mark division. For the past two years, the University has been competing in the bench mark division, which individually evaluates the total weight of recyclables collected in each residence hall.
Anita Fletcher, housekeeping manager at Offenhauer, said the recycling bins seen across campus are counted each week and then recorded on separate tally sheets by the University’s custodial staff.
“When students empty the recycling from their floor, my staff gathers all of the bins and then gives me a total sheet based on the amount of paper, plastic and cans collected,” Fletcher said. “We convert the number of bins to a weighted total. For example, a bin of plastic bottles weighs 13.5 pounds, so we write that in the tally sheet and send the recyclables to Nick [Hennessy].”
As the fourth week of RecyleMania comes to a close, the University is ranked second in the bench mark division and 10th in the country overall with a total of 29,000 pounds collected so far. Kohl Hall is the standing leader with a weekly average of five pounds per person.
“Kohl is the only residence hall on campus that recycles glass and [whether] or not this makes a difference, they have been the consistent leader over the whole competition,” Hennessy said.
Resident Advisers assist Hennessy in promoting recycling on campus units by joining “The Dream Green Team,” which consists of a group of RAs who encourage students to use the recycling baskets in their dorm rooms as much as possible.
Junior Theodore Brown is an RA at Kreischer Compton and said if more students were aware of the benefits of RecyleMania, they would be more anxious to recycle.
“If there was a wider sense of pride in how good we’re doing in RecyleMania, I think more students would make the initiative to try to get first,” Brown said. “Right now, we’re in second, and we could definitely win the bench mark division if more people knew about recycling and how it can benefit us in more ways than one.”