Last modified: Wednesday, February 3, 2010
'RecycleMania' competition comes to IU Bloomington
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 3, 2010
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Pack up your plastics and gather your glass containers. RecycleMania is coming to Indiana University Bloomington.
RecycleMania is a friendly, nationwide competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. The contest will run for 10 weeks, until March 27.
IU is paired in the competition division with Butler University, Marian College, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame. During the contest, IU RecycleMania Coordinator Steve Akers will collect and report waste and recycling data for the campus.
"With assistance from the Office of Sustainability and Hoosier Disposal, publicity and data collection will be important keys to a successful outcome," said Akers, associate director of IU Residential Programs and Services. "It would be great for the IU Bloomington campus to win one of the contest prizes, but more important will be to raise awareness on how we may reduce waste on our campus."
Participating schools are ranked each week according to which collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, collects the largest amount of recyclables overall, produces the least trash per capita, and has the highest recycling rate. With each week's reports, schools can watch online as their results fluctuate and use the standings to rally their campus communities to reduce and recycle more.
IU Bloomington is joining RecycleMania on the eve of its annual "More Art, Less Trash" initiative, in which outdoor recycling is collected in student-designed and painted recycling bins. The project also forms a prelude to the fall 2010 Themester of the IU College of Arts & Sciences, the theme of which is "Sustainability: Thriving on a Small Planet."
Goals of RecycleMania include to have a fair and friendly recycling competition, increase recycling participation by students and staff, heighten awareness of schools' waste management and recycling programs, expand economic opportunities, lower waste generated on campus by reducing, reusing and recycling, and act as a catalyst for universities to expand waste-reduction programs.
Begun in 2001 as a local competition in Ohio, RecycleMania has grown rapidly, nearly doubling in size each year until 2009, when 510 colleges and universities were involved. Last year was the first time that schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated.
RecycleMania is a project of the College and University Recycling Council, with program management provided by the Keep America Beautiful Foundation in coordination with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program. For more information, see https://www.RecycleMania.org.
