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RecycleMania has once again taken over Miami University's campus and with a record number of more than 400 schools nationwide participating this year, Miami hopes to regain the title earned in 2004 and 2005, and improve from its fourth place finish last year.
The official contest and residence hall competition began Jan. 27 and will end April 7, with final results available April 15.
According to the Web site, RecycleMania has spread nationwide including schools such as Central Michigan University, University of North Carolina and University of California-San Diego.
Along with competing against universities across the country, residence halls here on Miami's campus are also competing against one another, according to Alicia Glover, Miami's environmental education coordinator. Clawson Hall won the contest between residence halls at Miami last year, and collected the most recycled goods.
According to the RecycleMania Web site, the program was co-founded in 2001 by Stacey Edmonds from Miami University and Ed Newman from Ohio University because they felt recycling wasn't a large enough issue on both campuses.
According to recyclemaniacs.org, most of the waste produced on college campuses comes from the on-campus facilities such as residence halls and dining halls, in large quantities anywhere from 30-70 percent. After discovering this, waste audits were conducted in these buildings and showed that half of all the trash in residence halls can be recycled.
Miami and Ohio University competed in the first year of the competition to collect more recyclable materials than the other. Miami defeated OU, and the contest was born.
"Miami students seem pretty interested and excited about things," Glover said. "More faculty, staff and professors are getting in on it as well."
Glover said in the following years of the program's debut, it has gradually grown to the magnitude it is today. In 2004, RecycleMania partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Waste Wise program and expanded with its own Web site, electronic reporting and technical assistance.
She added that the 10-week period has a simple objective-to see which campuses nationwide can collect the most recyclable items between residence halls, on-campus apartments and dining halls.
The contest also strives to lower waste generated by on-campus facilities as well as heighten awareness of each schools waste management and recycling programs.
"Miami is participating in RecycleMania for many reasons; to actually reduce the amount of waste generated on our school's campus and also to educate on the importance of how reducing the amount of waste can actually help the environment," said graduate student Emily Donohoe.
According to the RecycleMania Web site, the contest consists of many smaller contests, such as which institution can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita or have the highest recycling rate.
The Per Capita Classic award, according to recyclemaniacs.org, is what the original RecycleMania competition consisted of-which school can collect the most acceptable recyclable items. Since then, the other awards have been added due to the size of schools participating.
This year, the former Per Capita Classic award was renamed in honor of Stephen K. Gaski, director of building and special services for Miami University, at the time of the program's creation. He was involved in RecycleMania and a contributor to the competition. According to Glover, Gaski passed away in the summer of 2005, and this award has been renamed to recognize his assistance in starting the program.
"Every year the National Recycling Coalition has a national recycling conference," Glover said. "One of the seminars was specifically about RecycleMania, and how to get people across the nation involved. It was at that seminar that it was named after him and an award was given it to his wife."
This year, an option has been added to register the entire university or subsets of the campus. According to recyclemania.org, those that choose to involve the whole campus (on and off campus) will have a consistent institutional standard.
"People are becoming more aware and hopefully at the end of the year we'll have more information to make changes," Donohoe said.
