RecycleMania

What is RecyleMania all about?

Due to the large amount of resources used by college and universities, and the amount of solid waste they generate, such institutions can in effect be considered small cities. To target unnecessary waste and implement reduction methods, RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college recycling programs, which helps to promote awareness and activities to inspire waste minimization in campus communities.

RecycleMania aims to:

 1. Increase recycling participation of students and staff.

 2. Heighten schools’ awareness of waste management options and recycling programs.

 3. Lower waste generated on-campuses by reducing, reusing and recycling.

How is recycling success measured?

RecycleMania spans 10 weeks, during which time schools continually report recycling and trash statistics from their efforts.  They are then ranked accordingly based on:

1. Who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita

2. Who has the largest amount of total recyclables

3. Who has the least amount of trash per capita

4. Who has the highest overall recycling rate

RecycleMania 2009 Results:

Yale Comes in 4th Among Ivies in RecycleMania Finals

The good news is that Yale finished in 4th place among the Ivy League schools participating in the judged section of RecycleMania. The bad news is that, in the final tally, there were only 5 Ivy League schools participating in that arena of the contest. The really bad news is that a certain school in Cambridge beat us by nearly 10 percentage points.

The percentages given are the recycling rates for each school over the 10-week period of RecycleMania.

1st Harvard 29.63%
2nd Princeton 28.82%
3rd UPenn 21.36%
4th Yale 20.92%
5th Brown 18.06%

In overall scoring the big honors went to schools outside of the Ivy League.

1st California State University – San Marcos 78.09%
2nd Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering 64.22%
3rd New Mexico State – main campus 64.02%
4th Mass. Maritime Academy 63.29%
5th Kalamazoo College 63.28%
6th Rutgers University 60.01%
7th College of William & Mary 59.05%
8th Tacoma Community College 56.68%
9th MiraCosta College 55.38% 1
0th Colorado State University 54.08%

Contact Yale Recycling (recycling@yale.edu/ 203-432-6852) with any questions about how you can help Yale out and recycle right!