February 16, 2012
Keep Calm and Recycle On—so say the green posters on the doors of trash and recycling rooms across campus. These posters were put up by the Recycling Task Force to publicize RecycleMania, an intercollegiate competition to reduce waste on campuses across North America.
RecycleMania began in 2001 as a challenge between Ohio University and Miami University. In 2004 the collaborative effort partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency to create a website and administratively support the program. In its 12th year this year, 605 schools from all 50 states and five Canadian provinces are participating in the competition. The effort last year by over 7.5 million students and staff resulted in the recovery of 91 million pounds of recyclables and organic materials. According to the RecycleMania website the 2011 competition prevented the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of 25,000 cars or the electricity use of more than 15,500 homes.
RecycleMania is an eight-week competition running from Feb. 5 through March 30. For two weeks before the competition, the schools establish benchmarks and get used to reporting the weight of their landfill and recycling. Colleges and universities compete in nine categories to determine who recycled the largest percentage of their total waste. Last year Hamilton College placed 146th with a 27.69% recycling rate in the Grand Champion category. This year the College seems to be on track for a similar finish, but there are still several weeks left in the competition.
Terry Hawkridge is the supervisor for the Recycling Task Force, which consists of several students who promote recycling on campus through programs such as RecycleMania and Cram and Scram. According to Mr. Hawkridge, “What we’re seeing at the beginning of this RecycleMania is that we are recycling less than we have in the past…We have not been getting enough recyclables collected.”
Mr. Hawkridge and Brian Hansen, the head of sustainability on campus, both speculate that the issue is a lack of awareness about single-stream recycling. Single-stream recycling simplifies the process by allowing any recyclable material to be placed in any recycling container. The different types of recyclables are then sorted at a waste facility. Mr. Hansen points out that it is somewhat of a paradox that the recycling rates at Hamilton as measured by RecycleMania went down after the institution of single-stream recycling. “That is the odd thing, the trend is that recycling rates go up when communities go to single-stream recycling.”
Although Mr. Hawkridge and Mr. Hansen work actively to promote and measure environmental awareness on campus, they both emphasize that the most important part of the effort is the actions of students. Mr. Hansen stresses that the best way to improve Hamilton’s rank in RecycleMania is to only use the garbage for things that cannot be recycled. “So much that goes out as our trash is actually recyclable.”
Member of the Recycling Task Force Alison Gurney ’14 expressed a similar sentiment. “Currently Hamilton is ranked 121 out of 161 colleges competing in RecylcMania. Considering the fact that composting has been maintained throughout the winter, along with the introduction of Single Stream Recycling, our recycling rate should be higher than it is,” said Gurney. “With additional effort by students, we can dramatically increase this percentage.”