University takes part in 'RecycleMania' competition

If you see a gorilla in rubber gloves picking out recyclables from the trash cans around campus, don't be alarmed. It's only the friendly Recycle Gorilla, who will be doing his part to contribute to this year's RecycleMania competition.

RecycleMania is a 10-week recycling competition that involves more than 386 colleges around the country. There are different recycling competitions to see which school can collect the largest amount of recyclables, produce the smallest amount of trash and have the highest recycling rate, according to the RecycleMania Web site.

The competition started on Jan. 18 and will last until March 28. University facilities will keep track of all trash and recyclables from every building on campus.

The RENEW/Sierra Club Student Coalition, an environmental awareness group on campus, is helping organize the competition at the University of Richmond.

"I don't expect us to win, but I think that we are going to do very well," said junior Megan Sebasky, the co-president of the coalition and student coordinator for RecycleMania.

Sebasky has been involved with recycling on campus since her freshman year. As the student coordinator of the competition, Sebasky is responsible for recording and submitting each week's results to RecycleMania. However, advertising is her main focus, she said.

In addition to the Recycle Gorilla, members of the RENEW/Sierra Club will be raising awareness by asking people to sign a pledge to recycle in the Tyler Haynes Commons. Also, students will be encouraged to write their names on their water bottles and throw them into a large recycling bin that will be in the Commons. There will be a weekly drawing from the bin and the winner will receive an environmentally friendly water bottle.

These efforts, in addition to a white board outside of the dining hall displaying the weekly results of the competition, are all important to generating awareness about the competition and recycling in general, Sebasky said.

Richmond has not participated in RecycleMania since 2006 because of a lack of manpower, Sebasky said. She said she was excited that more people were willing to take on the project this year.

"Over the years I have seen much more respect from students, faculty and staff toward recycling," said Al Lane, the manager of environmental and customer service at Richmond. Lane got involved with RecycleMania several years ago because of his responsibilities on campus with recycling and waste management and also his commitment to the environment, he said.

Lane noted that Richmond did well in the 2006 competition, but said he believed the school would do much better this year thanks to student involvement and promotion of the competition by RENEW/Sierra Club members.

The results from the most recent week are 780 pounds of bottles and cans, 4,750 pounds of cardboard, 2,810 pounds of paper and 59,760 pounds of trash.

Throughout the rest of the semester, Sebasky and her co-president, sophomore Alex Vlasic, have other plans to get students thinking about what they are throwing away.

"A lot of people don't even know what you can and cannot recycle, or even how to recycle," Sebasky said.

Members of RENEW/Sierra Club will be collecting items that they have found in the trash that could have been recycled and will pile them outside of the dining hall for a visual lesson on recycling.

Vlasic said it would be "all the stuff you could have recycled, but you didn't."

In addition, the club is planning waste audits that will take place in the forum. Trash cans will be brought by facilities to the forum, and members of the club will put on hazmat suits to rummage through the garbage, collecting all the items that should have been recycled and weighing them.

These events will be reminders of the importance of recycling to the students, faculty and staff, and will continue throughout the RecycleMania competition.

"I've seen one man from facilities go through the trash and take out all the beer cans," Sebasky said.

Contact reporter Brittany Combs at brittany.combs@richmond.edu