2017 Recyclemania Logo provided by their website.
What’s the best way to get WCU students to care about environmental issues? Make it a competition of course.
WCU will participate in the 2017 Recyclemania event for the first time starting with two preseason weeks, Jan. 22 through Feb. 4, and the actual event starting Feb. 5 until April 1.
According to their website, Recyclemania is a “friendly competition and bench marking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.”
The goal of the event is to reinforce the importance of recycling all the while promoting school spirit and unity.
Colleges and universities across the United States and Canada will be participating in recycling events throughout the semester to encourage recycling around campus.
WCU student organizations Eco Cats and the Sustainable Energy Initiative Committee (SEI) are taking on the leadership roles and participating in the events.
This year WCU will participate in big events such as Adopt-A-Games, at which Eco Cats and the SEI committee will promote and collect recycling at basketball home games in February. In the Game Day Challenge, which will take place at one of the home basketball games, WCU students will collect, sort, and weigh recyclables captured at one home game and submit the data to Recyclemania to compare WCU to other universities around North America. Finally, WCU will participate in a Mount Trashmore event around Earth Day, April 22, during which a large pile of campus waste will be placed in a highly visible location on campus. The pile will be sorted and separated to demonstrate that much of what we throw away is recyclable.
All the data collected during the 10 week competition will be submitted to Recyclemania and published for WCU students, faculty, and staff to read.
“We will share these with the campus so that everyone can see how we stack up against schools in the SoCon, the state and nationally. The data captured and software used will help us benchmark, track and build a stronger recycling program,” said Jeff White, Recycling Coordinator at WCU.
White became the first Recycling Coordinator at WCU in September of 2016 as part of the school’s efforts to increase recycling on the campus and reduce the amount of waste that is produced. Recyclemania will not only promote recycling on campus, it will allow the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management to collect valuable data on how much people on campus recycle and how much they waste.
