After 10 weeks of arduous can collecting, paper conserving, and waste reducing, RecycleMania finally came to a conclusion on April 7.
In the three years since Boston College first participated in the competition, this is its best finish yet, placing 16th out of 201 colleges and universities nationwide.
Statewide, BC ranked even higher: Of the 12 Massachusetts universities that participated, BC placed second. The rankings took into consideration the total population of the university, which includes students, faculty, and staff, and the total amount collected trash.
About 392,225 pounds of garbage produced by 14,309 people were collected, which averages to 27.41 pounds of trash recycled per person. On average, each individual recycled approximately 2.74 pounds of garbage each week.
With these results, BC finished way ahead of where it did last year. In 2006, BC recycled at a rate of 17.8 percent and took 33rd place out of 93 colleges and universities. This year, the rate of recycling nearly doubled, reaching 33.63 percent.
Katherine Walsh, a member of EcoPledge who was highly involved with RecycleMania and A&S '08, attributed the dramatic increase in recycling and overall student involvement in the program to multiple factors.
EcoPledge collaborated with Facilities Services to enable BC's participation in the competition. Since both groups had experience with RecycleMania in previous years, they were better able to promote and organize the University's efforts.
As part of the BConserves campaign, there was a movie event in which Too Hot to Handle was shown, and "BC Unplugged" T-shirts were given away. Additionally, there were banners and fliers around campus and e-mails sent out to the BC community to help increase knowledge about both the RecycleMania and Better Off competitions and get students involved.
Better Off, a program sponsored in part by the Office of Residential Life, focused on energy conservation in residence halls.
Walsh attributed the increased popularity of the contest to the recent coverage of environmental issues both nationally and globally, which has raised public awareness of these concerns.
The media, said Walsh, is helping to "mainstream environmental issues, and that has been making the average person a lot more conscious. … Students can see that recycling is easy and makes common sense."
Walsh hopes that the program will continue to grow in popularity at the University. "BC is such a competitive school and I hope that we can get into that a little more next year and get students more excited and involved so we can do even better and get higher in the rankings," said Walsh.
RecycleMania was a program started in 2001 by two students from Ohio University and Miami University. Their initial efforts aimed to reduce waste in residence hall areas after they found that up to half of all garbage produced in residential areas on college campuses was recyclable.
Since the first year, when only these two schools participated in the competition, RecycleMania has grown tremendously.
This year, the contest included separate challenges to determine which schools could collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, and which have the overall highest recycling rate.
BC participated in the Grand Champion, Per Capita Classic, and Waste Minimization competitions, collecting paper, corrugated cardboard, bottles, and cans.
In addition to finishing 16th overall, BC finished 42nd in the Per Capita competition, 25th for waste minimization, and 23rd for corrugated cardboard per capita.
The main goal of RecycleMania is to make students more conscious of campus recycling and the need to reduce waste. Walsh also hopes that the program allows students to "move from just recycling to better lifestyle choices … one step at a time."
RecycleMania receives support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program, the National Recycling Coalition (NRC), the NRC's College and University Recycling Council, and the National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology Program. n
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