RecycleMania energizes students

By Scott Norgaard     2/4/10 6:00pm

Prepare your plastic bottles and last semester's notes, because Rice is participating in the national contest of RecycleMania. This competition, which started Jan. 17 and runs until March 27, is intended to familiarize students with their campus environmental programs and instill in them a lifelong habit, according to the Recyclemania Web site, recyclemania.org. At Rice, the EcoReps at each residential college are responsible for publicizing the event, which is sponsored by Sustainability at Rice.

The contest, which ranks schools by several recycling-related metrics (amount of recyclables, amount of trash, recycling rate, etc.) comes with various categories, including the "Gorilla Prize," which goes to the university with the highest gross weight of recyclable material, and "Waste Minimization," which goes to the school with the least amount of municipal solid waste per individual. Rice has the likeliest chance of doing well in the contests that are done on a per capita basis, since it is up against much larger colleges that naturally produce larger volumes of recyclable materials, Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson said.

Last year Rice recycled over 17 percent of its waste and historically has been the most successful in the per capita paper recycling competition, where it has placed in the top 10-15 percent, Johnson said. According to the Recyclemania Web site, Rice ranked 22nd last year in this category with nearly 12 pounds of paper recycled per person.

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Currently, Rice is ranked fifth out of 150 schools competing in the per capita paper recycling contest, and 31st out of the 243 schools competing in per capita recyclables.

The contest is a project of the College and University Recycling Council, which is made up of six individuals in the waste reduction profession charged wtih setting standards for the competition. Project management is provided by Keep America Beautiful in coordination with the EPA's WasteWise initiative.

The contest, which started in 2001, has grown from a handful of schools to 607 participants in the 2010 competition, according to the RecycleMania Web site. When Rice joined the competition in 2006, it was the first university from Texas to do so. Now, the university competes with rivals like Houston Community College and University of Houston.

"We have a little thing going on with the University of Houston," Johnson said. "Shasta [the UH mascot] is going down."

Unlike UH, which held a rally to raise awareness for the contest, Sustainability at Rice is relying primarily on the EcoReps of each college to raise awareness. The individual EcoReps will come up with their own innovative ways to inform students, Johnson said.

"With 11 different colleges, you have 11 different approaches," he said.

Many college EcoReps are hosting study breaks to inform students of the contest and the importance of recycling. Sustainability at Rice and Facilities, Engineering and Planning are also relying on a Facebook page to raise awareness for the competition. The page features recent results posted by Johnson, as well as a small video and more information.

"We rally around things differently [than UH]," FE&P Manager of Communications Susann Glenn said. "We are unconventional wisdom. We do things in unconventional ways."

The Office of Sustainability and FE&P are sponsoring a Rice RecycleMania video contest showcasing the importance of recycling. All undergraduate and graduate students can upload a video to the RecycleMania at Rice University Facebook page where students can vote by clicking the "like" preference. Johnson and Glenn will select the winners, who will receive $100 and a batch of Glenn's homemade cookies.

Besides developing an eco-friendly habit on campus, the university can also benefit financially from recycling. It costs the university about two cents per pound of trash to remove waste, whereas recycling is roughly cost neutral, Johnson said. However, Johnson said the university's incentives for participating in the contest are not primarily financial.

"It's all about the bragging rights," Johnson said.

Johnson also mentioned that Rice has difficulty competing in some categories, notably waste minimization. A lot of waste is created in people's residences, which disadvantages residential schools, he said.

In addition to promoting recycling, the competition will also help clear much of the confusion that surrounds the act.

"I could do a better job [of recycling], but I don't know much about how to recycle the right way," Martel College sophomore Emily Pyle said. "I'm not very aware about how to do it correctly."

Clearing up that confusion is just one of the goals of RecycleMania. According to Glenn, the contest is intended to make the Rice community aware of the impact recycling has not just within the hedges, but on a larger scale as well.

"It is our obligation to the environment and to one another," Glenn said. "Now it's the norm to recycle. We are just making sure that it is happening.

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