Students, faculty and staff collected nearly 750,000 pounds of recyclables during the 10-week 2013 RecycleMania competition. The collection total placed U-M 11th among 365 colleges and universities participating in the nationwide competition's Gorilla Prize category.
“Participation by the campus community was crucial to successful waste reduction efforts during the competition,” said Alison Richardson, recycling coordinator with the Waste Reduction and Recycling Office, a part of Plant Building and Grounds Services.
“For the second consecutive year, we’ve placed among the top five in the Big Ten in our participating categories. We look forward to developing additional RecycleMania programming to further aid our efforts in next year's competition."
At the conclusion of the program, the university’s efforts generated the following results:
• 31.1 percent recycling rate per person (Grand Champion category).
• 11.4 pounds of recycling per person (Per Capita Recycling category).
• 36.6 pounds of waste per person (Waste Minimization category).
• 746,025 pounds of collected recyclables (Gorilla Prize category).
In the sprit of the competition, the Planet Blue Ambassadors created a short video featuring the university’s recycling mascot, Rufus, to boost excitement surrounding the competition and promote waste reduction.
Simultaneous to RecycleMania, the Waste Reduction and Recycling Office hosted the seventh annual Recycling Champions competition. The intracampus competition encourages participating buildings to beat their 2012 recycling and waste reduction totals.
The competition monitored improvement and awarded building performance in the following three areas:
• Most improved recycling rate: Indoor Track Building.
• Largest waste reduction rate: U-M Golf Course & Club House.
• Highest recycling rate: Nichols Arboretum Facilities.
This year marks the eighth year the university has participated in RecycleMania. A complete listing of U-M weekly collection amounts and competition standings is available online.The efforts of the 523 participating schools resulted in the grand total collection of more than 90 million pounds of recyclables, preventing the release of nearly 121,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equal to the annual amount of greenhouse gas emissions from 23,000 cars.