Colleges Around the Country Compete in Recyclemania

Colleges across the nation are getting into RecycleMania, when they compete against schools to see who can reduce the most waste. As the semester progresses, competitors will be going after each other to see who will be top dog of the recycling world.

What is RecycleMania?

RecycleMania is a way for colleges to promote waste reduction around their campus. The competition lasts 8 weeks in the spring semester. By creating a competitive atmosphere, more students are excited to get involved and try to get their school on top. The colleges that participate report the amount of recycling and trash collected by the school each week on a per capita basis. They are also ranked based on who has the best recycling rate of total waste and who generated the least amount of combined trash and recycling. RecycleMania describes its goals as:

1. Motivate students and staff to increase recycling efforts and reduce waste generation
2. Generate attention and support for campus recycling programs
3. Encourage colleges to measure and benchmark recycling activity in their effort to improve their programs over time
4. Have a fair and friendly competition

Although most schools have recycling collection and education programs, it is difficult to get students and staff to actually participate. 

To cater to the many different schools and their interests, there are different categories and divisions:

• The Competition Division is a more formal competition and schools are ranked alongside their competition, they must accurately track their waste and follow the rules of the competition closely.

• The Benchmark Division is casual and schools can go at their own pace, they don't have to follow the rules as closely. In addition, they are not included in the rankings and therefore cannot "win."

It will be interesting to see which of the schools participating comes out on top. Check out the RecycleMania website to get a better look at what it is and how your favorite schools are doing.