Ready, Set, RecycleMania
Being Seen Being Green: VWC to put waste reduction skills to the test as part of national event
By Leona Baker | January 31, 2011
Time to put our reusable materials where our mouths are, Marlins. For eight weeks beginning Feb. 6, 2011, Virginia Wesleyan College will be participating in a national program designed to encourage higher education campuses to reduce waste.
It’s called RecycleMania, and it began in 2001 as a friendly competition between Ohio University and Miami University to see which school could recycle the most. It has since expanded into an annual event used as a competitive or benchmarking tool for participating colleges and universities throughout the United States to promote increased recycling rates. This year, more than 600 schools have registered.
VWC will be participating in the Benchmark Division, recording recycling, trash and composting amounts daily and entering those figures into an online database. The official reporting period goes from Feb. 6 to April 2, but a two-week “pre-season” trial is already underway.
“Over the past few years, we have made great progress as a campus to lessen our carbon footprint,” says VWC Grounds Supervisor Kathy Giffin Bartkus.
Bartkus has been charged with recording the necessary data and coordinating the process on campus.
“By participating in the benchmark division,” she says, “we will be able to compare our current results against our records from previous years and formulate conclusions as to how effective our recycling program continues to be on campus.”
In addition to participating in the Benchmark Division, VWC has committed a series of waste minimization efforts as part of the program. Those include reusing and/or redistributing packing materials; promoting inter-office reusable envelopes and/or reclaiming extra envelopes for reuse; and creating active programs to educate employee and students about waste minimization practices.
Find out more about RecycleMania and VWC’s campus recycling program and do your part to reduce VWC’s impact on the environment.