Colorado State University Kicks-Off RecycleMania 2010 — Looks to Repeat Top Ten National Ranking

RecycleMania, a 10-week recycling competition between colleges and universities across the nation, kicks off this week at Colorado State University. This year, close to 600 universities from across the country are participating.

Last year, Colorado State placed 10th in the nation in the Grand Champion competition for RecycleMania, finishing with a cumulative recycling rate of 54 percent of the total waste generated on campus.

A campus trash sort will be held from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27 on the Lory Student Center plaza to kick-off this year’s RecycleMania competition. The trash sort will be on University Drive at the west-end of the plaza on campus. There will be a corral set up to display items pulled from the trash that could have been recycled. Last year’s trash audit revealed that 40 percent of what was thrown away could have been recycled.

Over a 10-week period, campuses compete in different contests to see which institution can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita or have the highest recycling rate.

The main goal of the event is to increase student awareness of campus recycling and waste minimization. All participating schools are required to report measurements in pounds on a weekly basis.

“CSU has finished in the top 10 in RecycleMania each year we have competed and our goal is to stay there as more and more schools across the country and abroad sign up to compete,” said Tonie Miyamoto, director of communication for Housing and Dining Services at Colorado State. “Our first year, we took on 17 schools, this year the count is close to 600 and we’re excited about RecycleMania’s growth.”

Colorado State offers single-stream recycling on campus which allows all recyclable items – from paper to cans to cardboard – to be placed in recycling bins. For more information about single-stream recycling at Colorado State, visit http://www.green.colostate.edu/recycling-single-stream.aspx.

To learn more about CSU campus recycling and recyclable materials, visit http://www.facilities.colostate.edu/index.asp?url=buildings/recycle.

To learn more about the RecycleMania competition, visit http://www.recyclemania.org/.
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