For the second year in a row, Carnegie Mellon is participating in the nationwide RecycleMania college recycling contest. The University is competing both in the classic "per capita" recycling contest and a percentage-waste-recycled contest, which is a new competition for 2005. With RecycleMania ending in one week, Carnegie Mellon currently ranks 22rd of the 34 colleges in the per capita contest and 26th of the 29 colleges in the percentage contest. Last year, Carnegie Mellon placed 6th out of 17 colleges in the per capita contest.

"I'm involved [in RecycleMania] because I think we can recycle more on campus," said Barbara Kviz, co-chair of Green Practices. "We're looking for more opportunities to recycle better."

Kviz said she first heard of RecycleMania from her colleagues in the College and University Recycling Council (CURC). Since members of CURC have advertised RecycleMania at CURC conferences since the competition was founded in 2001, participation in RecycleMania has almost doubled yearly.

RecycleMania isn't the first recycling competition in which Carnegie Mellon has participated. In 2002, the University placed second in both highest total average pounds recycled per student and in most overall recycled materials in the Rush to Recycle Challenge, organized by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. This competition included 19 colleges from across the state of Pennsylvania.

"We're still only recycling 19 percent [of our campus-wide waste products]," said Kviz. Kviz said that she hoped RecycleMania would encourage students to recycle more. According to Green Practice's trash sorts, 40 percent of items thrown away in trash cans can be recycled.

"Harnessing a sense of competition is key to increasing awareness and participation in recycling," said Marcy Bauer of MiamiUniversity of Ohio, the college that is currently leading in the per capita contest and which has won RecycleMania in two of the past four years. "Perhaps most important, though, is making recycling easy."

Bauer explained that MiamiUniversity uses many methods to boost their recycling rate, which she says hovers around 50 percent. For example, Miami has a small staff of paid graduate and undergraduate students who work exclusively to promote recycling on campus and does a trash sort to separate recyclable materials from waste products. Large and conspicuous recycling bins can also be found throughout the campus.

While Green Practices has distributed flyers, advertisements, and posters throughout the campus, weekly RecycleMania results show that Carnegie Mellon recycles at a steady amount of approximately 3 pounds per student.

"Getting your message through requires creative techniques and repetition," said Dawn Quirk, recycling coordinator at TuftsUniversity's Medford, MA campus, which has ranked highly in the recycling rate competition. "Sending out instructions is not enough to change behavior, but lack of information can be a barrier to participation."

Both Bauer and Quirk said that recycling had become a "way of life" at Miami and Tufts. Kviz hopes that the same will happen at Carnegie Mellon.

"In theory, we should be recycling really well all the time," said Kviz. "[Recycling] is an every day thing that should be part of our daily life."

Although Carnegie Mellon does recycle computer parts and other unusual materials that are not "counted" in the RecycleMania contest – for the competition, only paper, aluminum, plastic, glass, and cardboard recycling are – Kviz said the biggest hindrance at the college to compete with recycling rates like Tufts' is that the University does not have a food composting system. Sustainable Students did create a compost pile behind Doherty Apartments last semester, but most of the University's food waste understandably comes from the UniversityCenter. Kviz said that she is working in the Pittsburgh community to encourage the creation of composting piles.

"We will get better over time," said Kviz. "We just need to raise awareness."

RecycleMania ends on April 9 and finalized results will be announced April 15.

 talkback to the pulse