“Ever wanted to kick Harvard’s butt?,” the latest flyer from Green Practices asks as part of its promotion of Recycle Mania, a recycling competition between seventeen colleges and universities from across the country. Carnegie Mellon, along with eleven other schools, joined the game for the first time this year. Whichever school ends the competition with the highest total amount of recycled pounds per student living on campus wins.

“You throw away trash without thinking about it; we want to make it so you recycle without thinking about it, too,” said civil engineering and engineering and public policy sophomore Ryan England, an intern at Green Practices and president of the student group Earth.

Started by Miami University and Ohio University three years ago, Recycle Mania stemmed from the need to increase student awareness of recycling in on-campus facilities. Significant amounts of waste are produced in dining and residential buildings, and those areas are the focus of Recycle Mania.

Only dormitories classified as “on campus” are included in Recycle Mania. Each is equipped with recycling bins for aluminum, certain types of plastic, glass, and office paper (except for Roselawn Apartments, Scobell House, and Welch House, which do not have recycling for office paper). Cardboard can also be recycled in all of the dorm buildings by placing cardboard materials next to the other recycling bins. Off-campus housing facilities, such as Cathedral Mansions and London Terrace, have their recycling managed by the City of Pittsburgh, and thus aren’t included in Recycle Mania’s totals.

In addition to standard recycling bins, the University Center has a Recycling Education Center, established three years ago on Earth Day, which has recycling bins for just about everything imaginable, including CDs and overhead transparencies. Special services offered by Facilities Management Services make it possible to also recycle more unusual materials, such as scrap metal and old computers.

Students are particularly encouraged to recycle in dining halls, because food waste makes up a very high percentage of the total waste produced at Carnegie Mellon. The Pittsburgh community is currently working on a regional food composting initiative, which would help with this aspect of the waste problem.

It is important for students and staff to put their recycling in the proper bins. Waste management staff members must dig through recycling to sort it properly and to take out misplaced trash, thereby consuming valuable time that could be easily saved through heightened awareness.

All of the sororities and half of the fraternities on campus are also actively participating in Recycle Mania. Regarding the non-participating fraternities, CMU’s environmental coordinator Barbara Kviz said, “If they’re interested, please call.” All fraternities that participate are offered approximately half of the money that is earned from recycling aluminum cans from the ‘can cage’in the fraternity garage area.

“I’m glad we’re recycling at the rate we are, but waste reduction is the real goal,” said Kviz.

As evidenced by the Trash Sort, a Green Practices event last October, a large percentage of trash from the residence halls and the academic buildings is actually recyclable. Currently, Carnegie Mellon recycles 16 percent of its waste products, but could potentially recycle up to 45 percent of it.

Kviz encourages recycling not only for its environmental friendliness, but also because it helps create new jobs. Recycled materials can be used to make a variety of products, from lumber to clothing, fostering industry in the conversion of plastics and aluminum into these recycled products.

Green Practices plans to continue Carnegie Mellon's involvement in Recycle Mania next year, hopefully with increased student and staff support. In these last weeks of the competition, Green Practices's interns are stuffing mailboxes, talking to dormitory housefellows, and putting up more posters to encourage more participation in the home stretch.

Week 5 totals rank Carnegie Mellon at sixth place, with a total of 18.81 pounds of recycling per student. They fall behind Dartmouth, Five College, Villanova, and the two founding universities. Miami University has won the first place award every year since Recycle Mania began. The competition ends April 9, giving Carnegie Mellon another two weeks to improve its position and win the Recycle Mania trophy or the award for most improvement.

3/25/04 Correction: Carnegie Mellon ranked sixth in the Recycle Mania competition with 18.81 pounds recycled per student at the end of week 5, not fifth with 20.97 pounds as originally reported.