January 30, 2009

RECYCLEMANIA: Campus becomes full participant in national competition

By Dateline staff

UC Davis is turning RecycleMania into a campuswide project.
RecycleMania is a national competition, and it starts Feb. 1 and runs through March 28. Almost 500 colleges are signed up, competing to see which ones are the best at recycling.

In years past, the Davis campus participated in RecycleMania in a limited way—by measuring the recycling efforts at a few residence halls.

This year the campus is going all in. The campus already leads all other UCs and the California State University system in recycling, judged by the amount of waste that is diverted from landfills.

Now, as a full-fledged competitor in Recyclemania, the Davis campus hopes to shine on the national stage.

“To do this, we need help. We are trying to recruit individuals from as many campus departments as possible to be RecycleMania volunteers,” said Lin King, manager of the campus’s R4 unit, which urges faculty, staff and students to recycle, rebuy, reduce and reuse.

Student Crystal Huang, education and promotion team leader for R4, said volunteers are being asked to promote recycling among their coworkers and to keep them posted on how the competition is going.

King said R4 will also work with volunteers on “how we can reduce our waste and do even more recycling to further reduce our carbon footprint.”

The campus’s RecycleMania organizers said the first three volunteers in each department will receive reusable mugs from R4.

For UC Davis, with its good record on recycling, the competition is simple:

“Recycle as you normally would—at your office’s central recycling location, or your desk-side minibin system,” organizers said.

RecycleMania also creates an opportunity to encourage even more recycling, especially by people who may not be doing their part.

Interested in volunteering? Send an e-mail to recycling@ucdavis.edu, giving your name, department, division, physical location and telephone number.

On the Net

RecycleMania: recyclemania.org

R4: r4.ucdavis.edu