RecycleMania Competition Update

RecycleMania is an eight-week benchmarking competition for colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada to promote waste diversion efforts among their communities. Since February 7, WashU and 256 other institutions have been reporting the amount of recycling, composting, and trash they collect each week.

At WashU, the amount of total waste produced has decreased, with the average person producing five fewer pounds of waste (including landfill, recycling, and compost waste) relative to last year. However, the first five weeks of the competition showed that WashU’s percentage of waste recycled and the total amount of recycled or composted waste has decreased compared to last year’s competition. We need your help to change the status quo! So far, Wash U’s greenhouse gas reductions are at 738 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, or 145 cars off of the road. By helping us properly sort items into campus recycling and compost bins, you can help us increase these numbers through the end of the competition.

Our current competition rankings are listed below.

Grand Champion (Recycling rate as a percentage of overall waste generation): 104th place

Per Capita Classic (Recycling per person): 19th place

Gorilla (Gross tonnage recycled): 17th place

Waste Minimization: 97th place

Food Service Organics: 77th place

Please join us in taking action today! We encourage all WashU members to engage in “spring cleaning” and contribute recycling and compost weights to WashU’s total. The competition ends Saturday, April 2.