Campus Competition Promotes Recycling

RecycleMania is sweeping Haverford’s campus, encouraging students, faculty and staff to think hard about what they throw away and where they toss it.

This ten-week long national competition is aimed at encouraging waste reduction and good recycling habits. Participating colleges and universities measure the amount of waste and recycling they produce by ton, and compete to see who can recycle the most. While RecycleMania is a competition between institutions, it also serves as a benchmarking tool for colleges to judge how they are doing in terms of recycling. This is Haverford’s first year as a participant.

Haverford’s Committee for Environmental Responsibility (CER), comprised of student, faculty, and staff representatives, entered the college in the competion as part of Haverford’s larger commitment to promote environmental awareness and reduce the college’s carbon footprint. President Stephen G. Emerson ‘74 and former President Thomas Tritton both signed the American College & University President’s Climate Commitment, which lays out a timeline for the achievement of certain goals and a list of ways to fulfill the requirements. Participating in RecycleMania is one of the options.

Haverford is competing in three divisions: the Gorilla Prize, which goes to the college that collects the largest gross tonnage of recyclable material; the Grand Champion, which measures who achieves the greatest waste reduction and recycling levels; and the Per Capita Classic,  which measures the  level of recycling per person.

Alex Mirarchi ’11, a member of CER, says RecycleMania can help the College community get in the mindset of recycling. Additionally, he says, the recycling effort boosts the college’s image: many top students are interested in environmental issues and want to attend a college that is too. “RecycleMania creates a way for people to come together" and gives them something to do that benefits the environment, says Mirarchi.

According to Manager of Grounds Claudia Kent, who is also the College’s Sustainability Coordinator, students are key to the success not only of ReycleMania but Haverford’s shift toward more sustainable practices. “We really need student participation,” says Kent who points out that while Haverford received a “B” as an overall grade on its environmental report card for last year (up from a “C” the year before), it received a “C” for student participation.

Members of the Committee on Environmental Responsibility hope that RecycleMania will create more awareness of the amounts of waste we produce and materials we use. Meg Dickey-Griffith ’09, a CER student representative, believes that because the consequences are so removed from our daily lives, it is easy to forget the implications of our wasteful actions. Think about what would happen If we had to keep everything we throw away stored in our homes, Dickey-Griffith suggests. This would likely result in a very different relationship with the waste we produce.  RecycleMania reminds us, she says, that particularly as a Quaker school, “We have a moral responsibility to where we live and its health, particularly since it directly affects our health.”

While Haverford is the only tri-college institution participating in RecycleMania, local competitors among the 514 participating schools include Villanova, Rosemont, and St. Joe’s. Come March, basketball won’t be the only competition on people’s minds: RecycleMania results will be announced at the NCAA final four basketball championships. So go Squirrels: get out there and recycle something!

-- Holly Simpson

This article first appeared in the Bi-College News.