Recyclemania!

Image from the OU Recycling and Refuse Department site.

Anyone who has been to the dining halls in the last few weeks might have seen the Recyclemania signs reporting how we’re doing compared to nearby universities. In 2001, Recyclemania began as a friendly competition between Miami University and Ohio University (Miami won) but since then it’s grown rapidly, more than doubling every year until 2009. This year, 607 schools are participating from every state.

Since the competition started at our school nearly a decade ago, we’ve continued to be one of the most active participants in promoting Recyclemania. In addition to the scoreboards, which are displayed at Ping and Baker as well, Recyclemania promoters have created a trashcan mascot to appear at sports competitions and the college gate. According to their site, they also send letters with “friendly taunts” to the newspapers at other schools, and work with the University News Service to help promote the event on campus.

Through the school’s “Adopt-A-Game” program, students organizations ranging from the Green Network to the Women’s Rugby club have volunteered to collect trash for recycling at OU basketball games, a move the Recyclemania site claims allows them to recover as much as 80 percent of the waste generated by the games.

This figure falls in line with the goals of the university’s Recycle and Refuse Department, also known as Campus Recycling, which aims to recover 80% of waste generated at the university. To do this, they’ve deployed 16,000 recycling bins in halls (the small trashcan set that every dorm room receives).

According to scoreboards, Ohio University is sitting first in the state in waste reduction, the category we’re competing in this year. You can track our school's waste reduction statistics at the school's Recyclemania profile. So recycle, if not for the environment, then because it's time we take the title that we've been fighting for since Miami put us to shame all those years ago.