The University is currently participating in Recyclemania, a ten-week recycling competition between colleges and universities across the country. The University has entered the Per Capita Classic and is trying to recycle more paper, corrugated cardboard, and bottles and cans per person than any other school.
“Recycling isn’t exactly the sexiest thing in the world,” admitted Amanda Hungerford ’07. “[But] people have been really interested, which is great.”
Recyclemania started as a competition between two Ohio universities in 2001 and has been growing ever since. In 2004, it became affiliated with the Environmental Protection Agency, which currently provides logistical and technical support to the competition. This year, 93 schools are competing in Recyclemania, including seven NESCAC colleges. This is the first year the University has participated in the competition.
Amanda Hungerford ’07 brought the idea of Recyclemania to campus after hearing about it from her friend, Allison Burson ’07. Burson found out about Recyclemania while spending a semester at Bowdoin College as part of the Twelve College Exchange.
Hungerford, who is a member of the Environmental Organizer’s Network (EON) Recycling Subcommittee, brought the idea to committee’s other members. The group then presented it to the University Recycling Committee, the group composed of students, faculty, and staff in charge of recycling efforts on campus. “Everyone was really enthusiastic about it, so we entered,” Hungerford said.
The standings are recalculated every week based on weekly recycling numbers that participating schools submit through the competition’s website, www.recyclemaniacs.org. Associate Director of Environmental Health and Safety Bill Nelligan, who is also a member of the Wesleyan Recycling Committee, collects and submits Wesleyan’s results every week.
Nelligan likes that the competition is increasing awareness of how much the school recycles.
“It’s [not as useful a tool] as a nation-wide competition,” he said. “But it makes me actually look at the recycling numbers each week.”
Nelligan gets the numbers from Dainty Rubbish Service, which hauls trash and recycling from much of the University’s central campus, including the Butterfield and Foss Hill dorms, the CFA, the Science Center, and North College.
The University is Dainty’s only client in the area on Wednesdays, the day they pick up, so the company is able to provide an accurate summary of how much recycling and waste the school produces. The outer edges of campus and the senior wood frame houses are not part of the competition because the City of Middletown handles their waste on its regular routes, and would only be able to estimate how much recycling it picked up from University buildings.
The University was in the top five for cardboard in the first week, but didn’t do as well in mixed paper. The University also had unimpressive results for bottles and cans.
“We’re really excited about the cardboard numbers and trying to get the other numbers up,” said Zach Frosch ’08 who is on the EON Recycling Subcommittee and the Wesleyan Recycling Committee.
The numbers show where the University is recycling well, but also point out missed opportunities. For instance, last week Dainty had to send 170 pounds of the University’s bottles and cans to the landfill rather than the recycling plant because they were contaminated with other trash. Recycling facilities can sometimes sort paper or other waste out of recyclables, but that is not always the case.
“If it’s organics, kitchen waste, or metals, they just don’t have the capacity to separate that stuff out,” Nelligan said. “In that case, the recyclables and the contaminating trash get sent to the landfill.”
Nelligan also encourages people to think about what they are not already recycling. “There are a lot of things that are number one and number two plastics that people don’t think about,” he said. He offered the plastic dishes that microwavable meals come in as an example. “You have to wash it out, but it’s a completely recyclable product,” he said.
For more information about recycling on campus, visit www.wesleyan.edu/recycling.
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