Recycling competition set to begin Feb. 1

Students at University of Toledo will have the chance to compete against schools of the surrounding area in a competition that is not like any other — all while helping out the environment.
Feb. 1 marks the start of RecycleMania, a national event that encourages schools to recycle in order to win. The staff at UT’s Plant Operations Office has been making preparations for the upcoming event.
“The reason I sign up UT for the program isn’t necessarily to bring home the title…the point really is to get students excited and engaged in recycling,” said Brooke Mason, UT’s sustainability specialist.
The competition is eight weeks long, and Mason said that as long as students are recycling in any bin throughout campus they are contributing to the competition.
“We track by the week. Any recycling they put in starting Feb. 1, counts toward the competition, so as long as they find the right bin and are putting it in the right bin, they’re helping us compete in the competition,” Mason said.
According to Mason, students will see results of how each of the residence halls are doing each week and students are able to see how well Toledo is doing in the competition compared to other schools in the MAC.
UT has participated in RecycleMania since 2011 and the results have increased over the years.
This will be Mason’s third year running the program with UT and she said that she is impressed with how the numbers have gone up in national rankings.
Along with the Office of Plant Operations, the Office of Residence Life at UT also hopes to instill good recycling habits in UT students.
“The programs reinforce the practice of recycling in hopes to help students form lifelong habits and values that have an impact not only on our campus, but on the earth,” said Erin Thomas, assistant director for residential marketing and communication for the Office of Residence Life.
Thomas said since the program is eight weeks long, students will have a good chance to form these habits.
According to Thomas, the Office of Residence Life hopes to create awareness about the importance of recycling and the creative ways to recycle in a spirited and competitive manner.
Mason said the main goal of this program is not only to raise awareness about recycling, and encouraging students to do so, but those who are involved in RecycleMania also want other students to participate in order to get a better grasp of sustainability.
“What I have been trying to do since I started as the first sustainability person at UT was to build sustainability on campus; recycling is part of that.” Mason said.
However, these are just the first small steps, according to Mason.
“It’s sort of a stepping stone, we want to perfect recycling, we want to get really good at it, we want people to get excited about it, but then we want to take that and push it towards bigger initiatives.” Mason said.
There are other sustanability events happening in the future on campus, such as Community Electronic Recycling Day. This is an event open to students, as well as members of the community, who have any electronics (excluding televisions) that they are no longer using and would like to be recycled. The electronics are recycled through a company by the name of R2, so all data will be properly erased. For further information check UT’s Facebook page.