Green Beer Day aids fraternities in competitive aluminum can drive

Various off-campus fraternities competed to recycle aluminum cans in collaboration with Associated Student Government (ASG), Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Miami’s Sustainability Office from March 13-20.

The idea for an aluminum can drive competition stemmed from a conversation between Alex Miller, student sustainability engagement coordinator, and John Day, secretary for sustainability in ASG. Day said ASG was looking for a spring clean up event, and Miller had experience from her undergraduate years.

Miller attended Hanover College and was heavily involved with different environmentally friendly organizations. She said they wanted to do a similar competition at Hanover, but didn’t have a waste-hauler partnership at the time.

Jack Graves, vice president of philanthropy and service for IFC, said he helped brainstorm ideas to make the competition work best.

“[The fraternity presidents] thought it’d be really easy and chill to do,” Graves said. “And with Green Beer Day, that’s a lot of aluminum cans you can throw away.”

This competition was in partnership with River Metals Recycling, which provided a large recycling dumpster for free and bought the collected aluminum cans. The payment from this sale created the winning fraternity’s prize, along with a $500 donation to the winning fraternity’s philanthropy.

“We use [River Metals Recycling] for other recycling stuff on the physical facilities side of campus as well, so we already had a good partnership with them,” Miller said. “They said they have Miami alumni working for their office and love to come here for career fairs.”

Miller said she was impressed with how forthcoming River Metals Recycling was in helping with the competition. On top of the market price for aluminum, River Metals Recycling added an extra 50 cent total for every 50 pounds collected to help push the sustainability initiative.

Over the week, nine participating fraternities collected a total of 155.5 pounds, with Delta Kappa Epsilon, the winning fraternity, collecting 43.5 pounds. Delta Kappa Epsilon will recieve $500 for their philanthropy, as well as the payment from the aluminum cans.

The other top recycling fraternities included Delta Sigma Phi with 28 pounds, Phi Gamma Delta with 27 pounds, Kappa Sigma with 19 pounds and Phi Kappa Tau with 17.5 pounds. According to an estimation by River Metals Recycling, the total 155.5 pounds equals around 5,000 recycled aluminum cans.

A common goal between ASG, IFC and the Office of Sustainability is that this competition will improve sustainability infrastructure and create a better relationship between greek life and the Oxford community.

“It’s a really cool way to promote sustainability and especially get all the frats involved,” Graves said. “A lot more people are starting to do more service, and this could be a big explosion where people see everything happening at once.”

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Miller said this competition was a group effort that shows sustainability can be pushed and supported outside of environmental organizations. Day said he thought a competition aspect would appeal to fraternities, and he also hopes the event can continue following his graduation.

Miller said she thinks the first trial of this competition showed great outcomes. She said spring events can bring in more interest, and she hopes the drive will ultimately lead to a long-term cultural shift towards environmental stewardship.

“Nothing changes overnight, but hopefully this is a good start to some future connections and partnerships that we can have,” Miller said.

feeta@miamioh.edu