Volunteers sift through bags of trash from University Residence Halls at Library Mall Sunday.
The
recycling initiative RecycleMania culminated Sunday with coordinators
and volunteers sifting through piles of trash on Library Mall gathered
from university dorms to gauge the success of the 10-week nationwide
event.
Organized by the Wisconsin Student Public Interest
Research Group and Conservation and Recycling Efforts, event
participants separated trash from recyclable and “compostable” waste in
an effort to illuminate residence hall-dwellers’ recycling tendencies
and raise public awareness about the importance of recycling on campus.
With
66.5 pounds of trash and 25.5 pounds of recyclable and compostable
materials in the sample, event coordinators deemed RecycleMania a huge
success.
“In our trash sort, the bags o’ trash consisted only
of 27.7 percent recyclables! How great is that? 72 percent was garbage!
That’s pretty darn good,” event coordinator Melissa Flores said in an
e-mail to The Badger Herald.
Previous years’ numbers have
almost always been over 50 percent, said Devin Trezise, WISPIRG
visibility chair and event organizer.
“One of the goals was to
have it be a public visibility event,” Trezise said. “And I think we
definitely achieved that. People were walking by and commenting and
getting involved.”
But it was not a clean job, according to Teddy Schober, CARE member and event coordinator.
“There
was a moment when we had to ask, is that blood? We determined it
wasn’t, but it was still pretty gross at times,” he said.
Dedicated
to their cause, participants dug through the grit and grime hoping to
see a reduction in the number of recyclables in with the trash, Flores
said.
In a departure from last year, organizers decided to
participate in the benchmark division of the event instead of the
national competition division. Rather than encompassing the entire
campus, the event focused specifically on the dorms this year.
“Our
thought process was that most of the new students coming into college
are going to be living in residence halls. They’re open to new ideas,
they’re fresh out of high school, many of them are living on their own
for the first time. It seemed like a really good target audience,”
Trezise explained.
Another advantage to focusing specifically
on residence halls was the involvement of University Housing officials,
Trezise said. He commended University Housing on their displayed
interest in improving environmental practices within the dorms.
“They had a huge impact on the success this year versus last year,” Trezise said.
Recognizing
a possible deterrent to students who recycle in the dorms, event
coordinator Annie Johnson said, “I think a lot of people in the dorms
feel like they can’t recycle their beer cans and stuff because you’re
not supposed to be drinking there.”
She went on to assure
residents this does not seem like something they need to worry about.
She said she has never heard of anyone getting into trouble for
recycling alcohol containers in the dorms, as no one can tell where
they originated from.
“Recycling is the easiest way to reduce
your environmental impact,” Flores said. “Around campus it’s so easy to
just throw everything in the garbage bins, but if you just take a
second to think about it you can really help the environment.”
