Miami Student

Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Campus

First-year Ryan Cook adds to Miami's cumulative recycling weight for the nationwide RecycleMania competition.

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.

Continued...

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